Microsoft Office Tutorial - Office 2007 Help | Internet Marketing Online: Tips and Solution

Microsoft Office Tutorial - How To Open Office 2007 Files With Older Software

Posted on 26. Feb, 2009 by Janelle in Free Tips

It’s common for software developer to always incorporate “backward compatibility” while updating their software. This means that any files created under the older version software should be able to work with the newer software.

Well, this work the same for the popular Microsoft MS Office Professional 2007. However, you might have noticed that with Microsoft MS Office 2007, all Microsoft Office files are saved with extensions docx, xlsx and pptx. This created a problem for the older Microsfot Office software, i.e. the new documents cannot be opened by MS Office software prior to 2007 version.

How to resolve this problem? Quite simple, really. Here are 3 solutions you can consider. Just use whichever you think best suits your needs:

To enable the files you created with MS Office 2007 to work with older Microsoft Office, save your files with the older extensions (doc, xls or ppt). Take example of a MS Word file, click “Save As” from the menu and select “Word 97 - 2003 Documents”
For a straightforward, one-time-off solution, you can download a Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack directly from Microsoft website:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en
The last method is also a set-and-forget solution. But, it requires a few more steps to get the setting right. You can permanently configure Microsoft Office 2007 to save all your files with the old extensions. Again, taking Microsft Word as an example, go to the menu and click on “Word Options”.

A new window panel will appear. Click on “Save” on the left side of the panel. Selection options will appear on the right pane of the panel. The first option is “Save files in this format”. Click on the little inverted triangle to bring up the selection menu. Choose “Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)”. Click ‘OK’ at the bottom right corner. From now on, Microsoft Word 2007 will save all your documents in older software format. Do the same for Excel and Powerpoint:

If you find this short tutorial useful, do leave me a comment

12 Comments

Hans

26. Feb, 2009

Hi Janelle, lots of goodies in here I see.Now I know where to go to find some answers.

cheers
Hans

Lake

26. Feb, 2009

I appreciate the effort, but this doesn’t solve the issue I was expecting to have answered.

How do I open a .docx file in older software? That is the title of this article after all.

The title of this article should be, “How to create documents in 2007 that can be opened in older software.”

Is there any way to open a 2007 doc in 2003 software?

Thanks again.

Janelle

26. Feb, 2009

Hi Hans,

Thanks for commenting. Glad that you find it useful

Janelle

26. Feb, 2009

Hi Lake,

You’re quite right there. To make things complete, this is how you may go around it:

1. Open the MS Office 2007 documents you’ve created with the latest software.
2. Save the document with .doc, .xls or .ppt extensions. (cautions: if you’ve any formatting that’s peculiar to Office 2007 only, you may lose it).
3. Now, try opening it with older version of Microsoft Office software.

Hope this helps

Gary Jenkins

26. Feb, 2009

Great Tip. This has been a pain forever.

patzz

21. Mar, 2009

yah perfect one really good tut

Microsoft Office Tutorial Office 2007 Help Internet Marketing | Paid Surveys

02. Jun, 2009

[...] Microsoft Office Tutorial Office 2007 Help Internet Marketing Posted by root 2 hours 2 minutes ago (http://www.value4sure.com) Microsoft office tutorial how to open office 2007 files with older software posted on 26 ms office tutorial if you find this short tutorial useful do leave me a comment powered by wordpress designed by woo themes Discuss | Bury | News | Microsoft Office Tutorial Office 2007 Help Internet Marketing [...]

Microsoft Office Tutorial Office 2007 Help Internet Marketing | debt solutions

15. Jun, 2009

[...] Microsoft Office Tutorial Office 2007 Help Internet Marketing Posted by root 1 hour 13 minutes ago (http://www.value4sure.com) How do you open ms office 2007 documents with older software you find this short tutorial useful do leave me a comment powered by wordpress designed by Discuss | Bury | News | Microsoft Office Tutorial Office 2007 Help Internet Marketing [...]

Microsoft Office Tutorial Office 2007 Help Internet Marketing | internet marketing tools

15. Jun, 2009

[...] Microsoft Office Tutorial Office 2007 Help Internet Marketing Posted by root 15 minutes ago (http://www.value4sure.com) Internet marketing online tips and solution to make things complete this is how you may go around it ms office tutorial if you find this short tutorial useful do leave me a comment powered by wordpress designed by woo themes Discuss | Bury | News | Microsoft Office Tutorial Office 2007 Help Internet Marketing [...]