December 6, 2007
Microsoft Word 2007–file format work-around
Posted by Felicia under Tips & Tricks | Tags: microsoft, office2007, word2007, office2007_annoyances |According to a post by Christopher Carfi on the blog Social Customer Manifesto, Word 2007 saves files in a .docx format, making it incompatible with previous versions of Word. I don’t have Office 2007 yet, so haven’t run into this problem, but as many of you upgrade, and you’re sharing files with colleagues who haven’t, you’ll probably experience this compatibility issue. Thankfully, the post offers a work around:
“Office” button =>
“Word Options” button (it’s hidden down at the bottom) =>
“Save” link =>
“Save Files in this Format” = Word 97-2003
According to one of the post’s comments, the same sequence works in PowerPoint and Excel 2007.
Thanks to Christopher for the heads-up and to his friend Korbett for providing the work-around!
December 6, 2007 at 9:28 am
Or, you can simply download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats from Microsoft at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en
This is free, and will allow your older versions of Office to work with the new file formats.
December 6, 2007 at 9:47 am
Thanks, Fred!
December 7, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Or you can use the same File|Save As… instructions and choose to save the file as an RTF or Rich Text File. All text formatting is retained and the file becomes compatible with almost every word processor program written during the last 20 years or so. (RTF is an open source format, which I love!)