Open Office 2007 Files in Mac OS X – Office 2004 for Mac Compatibility Issue Alternative
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.
What you will see when try to open an Office 2007 document on Mac Office 2004.
So for the time being, Office for MacOS X users who wants to open, read, view, edit, modify and save Office 2007 files, documents, workbooks, presentations, etc or share Office files across Windows and Mac platforms will have the following alternatives:
- Wait for the release of free and downloadable file format converters and compatibility pack to be released by Microsoft Mac BU (Business Unit) with beta release scheduled on Spring 2007 (end March or early April), and final release available six to eight weeks after next upgrade of Office for Mac (which mean 8 – 10 months from now).
Note: A beta limited functionality converter has been released.
- Upgrade to next version of Office for Mac (Office 2007 for Mac) which will be available 6 – 8 months after general availability of Windows Office 2007), and has native support of Office Open XML file format.
- When creating and saving documents or files in Office 2007, choose “Save As”, and save the file as a “Word/Excel/PowerPoint 97-2003 Document” (.doc, .xls, .ppt) format. This method of Office trick will save the documents with backward compatibility ability.
- Download then open source OpenOffice.org productivity suite which due to support the proprietary Open XML document format in Microsoft Office 2007 by the end of January.
Related Articles
- Convert Office Open XML Files to Mac Office 2004 and v. X Compatible RTF Format with Free Converter
- Open, View, Edit, and Save Office 2007 Documents, Spreadsheets, Workbooks, and Presentations in Office 2003, XP or 2000
- New Microsoft Office 2007 File Formats and Extensions for Word, Excel and PowerPoint Files
- Get Free License Serial Number for Kingsoft Office 2007 Professional for MS Office Alternative
- KingSoft Office 2007 Personal English Edition Free Download as Complete Familiar Microsoft Office Replacement Alternative
- How to Open MDI (Microsoft Document Imaging) Format with Office 2007
- Export and Save Word or Excel Documents as Acrobat PDF or XPS Files Directly from Microsoft Office 2007 with Add-in
- Download Add-On For 2007 Microsoft Office To Convert MS Office Documents to PDF Format
- Change Office 2007 Default File Save Formats and Extensions using Group Policy (GPO)
- Microsoft Office 2007 System 2007 SP2 Features and Improvements List
Entries (RSS)
July 12th, 2008 06:30
I meant to say,
“Forward INcompatibility is common since software makers often don’t support to their older software.”
July 12th, 2008 06:28
Backward compatibility normally refers to the software application, not the documents that they create. Thus the correct statement would have been to say, “Office 2004 on the Mac is not forward compatible with .docx files created by Office 2007″. Forward compatibility is common since software makers often don’t support to their older software.
As far as backward compatibility goes I have run into this problem as well. I have found that Word 2007 users on Windows can not open my .doc files created by Word v.X on a Mac. That is true backward incompatibility!
November 8th, 2007 06:00
Pages [iWork08] supports docx. Neo Office works fine as well.
July 10th, 2007 16:34
[...] Digital Life has information on the various options for working with Open XML in Office 2004 for Mac. Mac Mojo (the Mac Office team blog) has information about a beta converter for Word documents [...]
June 12th, 2007 09:22
Why wait for Mac Office or the X11 OpenOffice, when the current version of NeoOffice has full support for .DOCX and the other Office 2007 formats?
May 31st, 2007 15:23
[...] Open Office 2007 Files in Mac OS X – Office 2004 for Mac Compatibility Issue Alternative » My Digit… Oh great, looks like I’m porked for reading all the files Microsoft people will be sending me. Now I’ll have to be “can you send a PDF” guy… (tags: msft formats word office osx documents) Share This [...]
May 23rd, 2007 05:26
Or use NeoOffice, that allow you to read, edit and save in another format ***x files.
Valter
May 16th, 2007 02:46
FYI. There is another solution for Mac users who receive Office 2007 files. MacLinkPlus software by DataViz will allow anyone using a Mac to view Office 2007 (Work & Excel) files that come in via email or other means. Thanks!
Dave