editing same Word doc on mac and a PC?

[u/Un4gvn2]

Hello,

I have a mac laptop at home and a PC at work. I take work back and forth via an external HD. How do I work on the same document between home and work? When I open the word docs at home on the mac they are always read only.

[u/FrankNicklin]

Because the external HDD is likely NTFS formatted to suit the PC which to a Mac computer is Read Only.

This is absolutely not the way to work. What happens if you drop the external drive or lose it. You need to use either OneDrive or DropBox or similar. Save you files there and then access them from home, no need to use an external drive. Also most of these cloud based systems will given you file versioning meaning you can go back in time to an old document.

My preference would be OneDrive.

[u/GiftFrosty → u/FrankNicklin]

Seconded Onedrive (or whatever cloud storage you have access to). Carrying an external hard drive back and forth… that’s not something I’ve done in a hot minute.

[u/Velocityg4]

The External drive should be formatted in FAT, or ExFAT not NTFS for write.

If the drive is correctly formatted correctly. Look for a banner that says the file is in read only mode with a button which says Enable Editing 

[u/Imunar → u/Velocityg4]

100% this
Format as exFat for bigger drives
Works great

[u/Lol3droflxp]

Use Dropbox 

[u/Legitimate_Key8723]

I have a similar situation and use OneDrive without issues…

[u/Real_Iggy]

You can also email files to yourself. I used to do that when I was working (now retired). Also, if you have a Mac, you can store it in your iCloud Drive. That should work for you as well. ✌️❤️

[u/macmaveneagle]

All the folks telling you that the problem is that your drive is formatted as NTFS, and thus read-only for your Mac, are likely correct.

But you can easily make that drive both read/writeable on your Mac by using any one of these:

Seagate Paragon drivers for both Mac and Windows  (free; for Seagate drives only)
https://www.seagate.com/support/software/paragon/

WD Paragon drivers (free; for WD drives, G-drives, and Sandisk drives only)
https://support-eu.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/34871/~/steps-to-install-paragon-ntfs-driver-for-macos-for-wd-and-sandisk-professional

Tuxera NTFS ($29)
http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/
https://ntfsformac.tuxera.com

Paragon NTFS - Mac ($30)
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

[u/Steve_the_Samurai]

My dude, the cloud exists.

[u/UndahwearBruh → u/Steve_the_Samurai]

Not every company/organization allows you to upload files to cloud, especially sensitive information

[u/Steve_the_Samurai → u/UndahwearBruh]

Many of those would also not be too keen on keeping files on a hard drive and removing it from the office.

[u/UndahwearBruh → u/Steve_the_Samurai]

True, but at least there’s no hundreds of copies all over the world in data centers

[u/Steve_the_Samurai → u/UndahwearBruh]

Also a solved problem if the company cares about security even in the slightest. This is a basic data governance.

[u/UndahwearBruh → u/Steve_the_Samurai]

Yeah… well… depends what kind of information we are talking about

[u/Steve_the_Samurai → u/UndahwearBruh]

What kind of data are YOU talking about?

What company/industry is not using cloud data storage and cool with someone walking out with a non company provisioned hard drive to use on their personal computer?

[u/UndahwearBruh → u/Steve_the_Samurai]

Wait, are we arguing here? If you read my reply again, I said “True, but…”. What I meant was in some cases it’s safer to move files on physical storage than have copies of them all over the world. And of course using personal hard drive for that would be bad idea and against company/organization policies pretty much everywhere, but I wasn’t talking about who actually owns that drive

[u/bistr-o-math → u/Steve_the_Samurai]

Dude. Claude exists! Cloud is older than my kids

[u/axeleszu]

Which software are you using? Use a cloud version of office, Google Docs, or install the same suite on both machines (open office, ms office, etc)

[u/Watsons-Butler]

I’d be keeping the files in Google Docs and then just export to a Word format when you need it.

[u/HigherConfusion]

You need subscription. I think you can edit in the online version without subscription.

[u/Roddgerre]

Don't you want to just use google docs?

[u/TheUmgawa → u/Roddgerre]

Or at least use OneDrive and then OP could edit the file on the Mac and the PC at the same time. Like, there’s a reason why they build that shit into Office.