One of the advantages of having a Windows Mobile PocketPC is that a friend or associate can e-mail you a Word or Excel document as an attachment, for your review or comments. Likewise, you can create Word and Excel documents and e-mail them to associates. However, the versions of Word and Excel on the PocketPC have fewer features than their desktop PC siblings. That means that you'll either loose or won't be able to see some of the formatting and other elements of the full Word and Excel documents.
On pre-Windows Mobile 5.0 devices, Pocket Word and Pocket Excel save their documents (by default) in "Pocket" document formats, which are different than regular Word and Excel document formats. If you are creating (or editing) a document on your Pocket PC and intend on sending it to someone using the desktop PC version of Word and Excel, be sure and save it in the desktop PC Word and Excel formats. Otherwise, they may not be able to read them on the desktop PC. Here's how you do it:
- Make sure the new or edited document is open in Pocket Word or Pocket Excel.
- Tap on the "Tools" menu at the bottom of the screen and select "Save Document As." or "Save Workbook As." from the pop-up menu. This displays the "Save As" screen, which allows you to give the document a name and select the location (main memory or storage card) and file folder in which you want to store the document. It also has a field labeled "Type:" that allows you specify the document format.
- Pocket Word: Tap on "Type:" and select the "Word 97 /2000 Document" option from the drop-down list. (You can also save the document in Rich Text or Plain Text formats. The only thing you don't want to do is save the document in Pocket Word Document. Pocket Excel: Tap on "Type:" and select "Excel 97 /2000 Workbook" from the drop-down list. (Do not save it as a Pocket Excel Workbook.)
- When you've selected the document type, tap on "OK" to save the document.
Note: You don't have to worry about this on a Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC. Word Mobile and Excel Mobile automatically save their documents in the standard Word document format. If fact, you are no longer even given the option of saving documents in Pocket Word or Pocket Excel formats.