I have heard so much about imacs and I had my first proper go on one the other day - very stylish, but it is causing me problems already!

The main problem is that I have transfered over Office 2003 documents and everytime I try to open them, the OS trys to open them with "Mac Office" (which is a try or buy version that has expired). I have come to realise that every file has to be re-associated seperatly. Is there a way around this?

Select the file in Finder, then press Apple + i (or from File menu "Get Info"). On the "Open with" section, select the application you want to use and click "Change All" -button below it.

http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/8715/openwith7kr.png

Thanks. I seem to have another porblem on top of that now also - After I uninstalled the trial of mac office, *.doc files will no longer open with iWorks - when I bring up the open dialog box in iWorks all the doc files are greyed out.

Do you have any ideas why this may be?

Which methods for opening files have you tried?

Check also this: Problems with OS X Files: Open, Copy, Delete, and Beyond (http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=30243&seqNum=3&rl=1)

You could try deleting Launch Services database as mentioned in the article.

thanks for the link, the article is helpfull, i will read it fully tomorrow.

I have tryed opening the files from the actual icon, and using open with, and from iworks itself. Most files open ok but a few doc files will not open, I cant remember the error message but i will post it on here tomorrow.

I also have another problem if you would be kind enough to help:
I have managed to edit the default template in iworks word processor, so that a new document opens up as a full page, but I would like to make existing documents open up in a similar way (basically so I can get them as near to an actual A4 size as possible). The way I can do this is by setting the "View size" to about 175% but I cannot find how to make this the default view size. Is this possible?

I've never even seen iWorks, so I can't comment about that.

I have now decided on a simpler sollution - I am going to purchase Mac Office as I have tryed the demo version and I think it will solve all the compatability problems.

Thanks for all the help though.

Try the OpenOffice solution from NeoOffice. Has Word and Excel compatibility,
requires OS 10.3.9 and above and --- IT'S FREE:-)

Thanks for the reply, in the end I bought a copy of mac:office (and it did the job perfectly!).

But I will bear neo office in mind, it sounds good.