Compatibility Preferences

Compatibility options (Figure 35) control the internal formatting of the current Word document for compatibility with other applications or versions of Word. Settings are divided into two categories: Compatibility options for the current document and Compatibility Report.

Figure 35. The default settings in the Compatibility pane of the Preferences dialog.

Compatibility options for the current document

Compatibility options enable you to set options for the currently active document:

• Font Substitution enables you to specify a font to be used in place of a missing font. (This happens most often when you open a file that was created on someone else's computer.) Click this button to display the Font Substitution dialog (Figure 36). You can then select the missing font name and choose a substitution font from the Substituted font pop-up menu, which includes all fonts installed on your computer. To reformat text by applying the substituted font, click the Convert Permanently button. If the document does not contain any missing fonts, Word will not display the Font Substitution dialog.

  Figure 36. The Font Substitution dialog.

  

  
  

• Recommended options for enables you to select a collection of compatibility rules for a specific application. Choose an option from the pop-up menu (Figure 37).

  Figure 37. The Recommended options for pop-up menu.

  

  
  

• Options enables you to toggle check boxes for a variety of internal formatting options. These options are automatically set when you choose one of the rule sets from the Recommended options for pop-up menu, but you can override them as desired.

• Default applies the current dialog settings to all documents created with the current template from that point forward.

Compatibility Report

Compatibility Report options enable you to set up the compatibility report feature. This feature checks a document and displays a list of possible incompatibilities with specific versions of Word (Figure 38).

Figure 38. An example of a compatibility report created by Word. To check a document's compatibility, choose Tools > Compatibility Report.

• Check documents for compatibility enables the compatibility report feature.

• Reset Ignored Issues allows the compatibility report feature to recheck the current document for previously ignored issues.

• Reset All Issues allows the compatibility report feature to recheck all documents for previously ignored issues.