Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, Jaguar Edition, The

Opening a Document in a Different Application

Now, just because you have an icon representing a document you or someone else created in a certain software application doesn’t mean you can open up that document on any computer. Clicking on a document icon will only open it IF the application itself is also in the computer, either on the hard disk, on another disk that is inserted into one of the drives, or if it’s accessible on a network. If the application can’t be found, then the document doesn’t have anywhere to put itself! Generally, you must have the same version of the application (see page 180) as the one in which it was created.

Sometimes, however, certain applications can open certain documents that were created in other applications. ...