Expert: Ken Black - 6/17/2010

Question
If my students make up files in InDesign on a PC, can I open and work on those files in InDesign on a Mac? In other words, are InDesign files easily, seamlessly convertable to Mac and PC versions of InDesign? Thanks.

Answer
Hi Dawn,

Indesign files are compatible on either PC or Mac. You shouldn't have any problem with the document itself opening on either platform.

Where you may run into trouble is with fonts.

Type 1 (Postscript fonts) don't transfer from one platform to the other and often the PC versions and Mac versions have different formatting instructions which causes text to re-flow when converting documents back and forth between platforms. TrueType fonts, while they may work on either system in some cases, often have the same formatting and re-flow problems.

Open Type fonts are platform independent, for the most part. They work on either operating system and should not cause problems switching from one system to the other.

I recommend that you try to get the students to stick with Open Type fonts for ease of portability between the two systems. Unless you have font sets for both systems that match up when a document is converted.

Thanks,

Ken Black

www.bestprintingonline.com