I contract with a company that is making PowerPoint available to their Mac users. Previously it was only available to people running Windows on a PC machine and if Microsoft apps were needed, the individual would use Parallels Virtual Windows which mostly worked out great.
It's always been discouraged to share (i.e. several people sharing a file back and forth and making their own changes to it) PowerPoint files between Windows users and Mac users because they are two different apps, the features differ, and there can be cross-platform compatibility issues with regard to working on slides and sometimes merely viewing slides created on a different platform. Some of the things I used to run into a lot working on both platforms were:
- Fonts problems
- Images not being consistent in placement and size or sometimes just not showing up when slides are created on a Windows machines and opened on a Mac
- Slide masters not functioning the same when shared back and forth
- Complicated animations often don't translate from one platform to another
- Slideshows might not view the same between platforms, for example if you create it on Windows and try to show it at a meeting on a Mac
- Template building is different between apps
- You can't add templates to individual libraries across the entire firm on a Mac the way you can in a Windows environment
- Can YOU think of any more potential problems?
Does anyone know if the apps on Windows and Mac have become more seamless or are there still a lot of issues? I recall back about 5 years ago Microsoft had two different teams of developers and the app was treated as basically two different apps on Windows and Mac. Unless you are working with very simple slides of text bullets, I always thought it was a bad idea to share and I'm wondering if it's gotten any better or about the same. Do you think it's a bad idea or not? Also curious if anyone here works in IT for a firm where it's on both platforms and if it works ok. Thank you!
