Open, View, Edit, and Save Office 2007 Documents, Spreadsheets, Workbooks, and Presentations in Office 2003, XP or 2000
Microsoft has started to release and distribute Microsoft Office Systems 2007 to corporate customers to upgrade and replace the 2003 Office Systems on the desktop computers, while the retail package of 2007 Office Systems will available to the general public beginning January 2007. Among the Office 2008 business productivity suite new features and enhancements, one of the major changes are usage and conversion to new Office Open XML Formats as the default file formats for Word 2007 documents, Excel 2007 spreadsheets and PowerPoint 2007 presentations which use the file extensions of .docx, .xclx and .pptx when users create and save the files. These new file formats with XML technology are not compatible with earlier version of Microsoft Office (2000, XP and 2003), so previous version of Office users won’t be able to open, view, edit or save the Office 2007 documents or files.
In the ideal world, everybody would have upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007, so there is not compatibility issues with documents, spreadsheets or presentations created by various version of Microsoft Office (Office 2007 has backup compatibility support with almost all old Office files). However, due to price and cost consent, no every company and every user will purchase the new version of Office Systems and upgrade to Office 2007. This situation will cause the users of older version of Microsoft Office 2003, Office XP (2002) and Office 2000 unable to read or view or open to edit and save the Office files created in Office 2007, as Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint versions 2000 through 2003 cannot natively open documents that are stored in the Office Open XML Formats in 2007 Microsoft Office programs.
To solve this files and documents compatibility issues, Microsoft has released Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats as the solution or workaround for previous version of Office users. Users of Microsoft Office XP (Word XP, Excel XP, and PowerPoint XP), Office 2003 programs (Word 2003, Excel 2003, and PowerPoint 2003) or Office 2000 programs (Word 2000, Excel 2000, and PowerPoint 2000) can download and install the free Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack (FileFormatConverters.exe) to open, create, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the new XML file formats of Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 by using existing version of Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, without the need to upgrade.
To open, view, read, create, edit or save the 2007 versions of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files in Office 2003, XP or 2000, after installing the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, simply double click on the documents, workbooks or files, or click on Save button. You can create a new 2007 XML format documents too by open a new blank document or workbook or presentation, and store the file by clicking on Save. For Excel 2000 and PowerPoint 2000, users will need to right click on an Excel 2000 file or a PowerPoint 2000 file and click on Save As.
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Entries (RSS)
December 7th, 2006 13:16
[...] Microsoft has released Microsoft Office 2007 Systems and Suites for Windows. However, the new Office 2007 is using new Office Open XML Formats as the default format for popular business productivity suites. Thus, instead of usual 3-character extension, Office 2007 now uses 4-character extension to identify and differentiate the Office 2007 files, such as Word .docx, Excel .xclx and Powerpoint .pptx. The new XML format for the Office documents is not backward compatible, which means the new files or documents created with Office 2007 will not be able to open with previous version of Office editor or viewer directly. To solve the backward compatibility issues of new Office 2007 file formats with older version of Office programs (2003, XP and 2000) in Windows, Microsoft has released Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats that allows users of Microsoft Office 2003, XP and 2000 to open, edit and save Office 2007 files. However, for Macintosh users who use Office 2004 for Mac, there is no such luck yet, as the compatibility pack or file format converter for Mac OS X version of Office is not yet ready. [...]
February 28th, 2007 10:10
Way to go Microsoft! Lets create software that doesn’t work with our other software. Yet another fine example of your inept and incompetent ability to create software, that well… just sucks.
Get on the ball, pull the fingers out or your a$$e$, and develop translators for the Mac to open 2007 XML files. End of story.
March 9th, 2007 06:49
Agree. I was blindsided by a “strange” 4 alpha extension document the other day, with not a hint of warning from MS’s publicity machine that older version of Word would not be able to read the Office 2007 formats.
Amazing. The company just continue to blow holes in it’s overpriced feet time and again. I’m setting aside part of my day now to find the patch for 2003 Word that will allow me to read in the new docx and docm extensions (if MS has released one). Meanwhile, I blew a deadline to respond to a client using MS 2007 because of this new “advance” in Word processing “security.”
March 24th, 2007 17:11
Software evolves, it’s part of improving. Mac is about as proprietary as something can get, so why complain about a new file format in new version of Office? As the article states, there are converter packs available for the older versions.
Plus, Office 2007 allows you to save your documents in the old format, in case you’re sharing your documents with a computer user that is afraid of change (and therefore should not be using a computer anyway).
April 1st, 2007 16:53
WE can change the default file format in word 2007. Since *.docx files can not be opened in older versions of Office Word, do these in word 2007
1) Open word 2007, goto menu File -> SaveAs
2) On “SaveAS” popup window, drop down the options in “Tools” (just aside “Save” button).
3) goto “Save options..”
4) chose “Word97-2003 Document(.doc)” option under “Save files in this format:”.
April 2nd, 2007 22:48
Nagesh, THANK YOU. I thought I was the only who knew about this.
April 23rd, 2007 14:15
I am suffering from the reverse problem: opening Powerpoint 2003 files in 2007, the alignment of all text is out vertically both on screen and when I print. Very weird, and no idea how to fix it.
May 8th, 2007 19:12
Hi,
I had made a powerpoint presentation using MS office 2007.It can’t be opened in lower versions.Help me to convert it in such a way so that it can be opened.
May 9th, 2007 07:06
Have you read the above?
Tell the person who wants to open it to download the compatibility pack, or else save it as ppt file instead of pptx.
June 6th, 2007 03:23
[...] Office files between various version of Office 2007, 2003 and 2002 (XP), Microsoft has released Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, which when installed on the computers of users using Microsoft Office 2003 or Office XP (2002), [...]
June 26th, 2007 10:04
i use 98se and office 2000. are there other converters i can use?
July 6th, 2007 22:02
in an ideal world everyone would have updraded to vista???? Are you serious?
In an ideal world …. microsoft would be able to make descent software that was useful and compatible
In an ideal world everyone would be informed and be buying systems that worked ie Macs
December 5th, 2007 00:29
windows works fine… Macs are for dummy.
December 7th, 2007 01:21
PCs suck. and so does microsoft!
January 9th, 2008 21:46
hmm, well done microsoft. You release a piece of software that can’t be opened on earlier versions. In my office I have no rights to install this service pack….so where does that leave me? Well, i think i might petition our company to start using open source software like linux and open office…they even make their software readable on microsofts programmes, whereas micrsoft can’t even do it for themselves…..lol..we should all boycott microdoft due to their incredible ineptitude.
August 5th, 2008 21:10
i am having set of xlsx and pptx files, need to convert those to xls and ppt. but the command line is not doing any help.
for the the xlsx i tried
c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12>excelcnv -oice c:\xl.xlsx c:\xl.xls
it gives out a xl.xls but its just the copy of my input xlsx file when i open that file in the office 2000 it gives error. i just renamed the xl.xls to xl.zip, now i can see the xmls inside. so it just created the copy of my input file and renamed it to xl.xls.
Any help on this highly appreciated.
Thanks