Office 2007/2008 Compatability

This section describes various ways of dealing with the problems of the new Microsoft Office 2007 (PC) and 2008 (Mac) file formats.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that up through Office 2003/2004, Office files were saved with .doc, .xls, or .ppt extensions for Word, Excel and PowerPoint respectively. In Office 2007/2008, however, these extensions have been changed to .docx, .xlsx and .pptx, again, respectively. This means that Office 2003/2004 products cannot open these files.

To work with this problem, there are a few options.

Office 2007/2008 Compatibility Pack for Office 2003/2004

If you have Office 2003/2004, you can install a compatability pack that will make your Office products able to work with new Office files. See the documentation below for instructions on how to do so:

• Installing the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack (PC)     
• Installing the Office 2008 Compatibility Pack (Mac)    

 Save Office 2007/2008 files in 2003/2004 Compatible Format

If you have Office 2007/2008, you can make it easier on the people without the newest version of Office by saving your files in the backwards compatible .doc, .xls, and .ppt formats. This is highly recommended if you will be sharing files with others who may not have the new version of Microsoft Office.

• Saving Files in 2003 formats (PC)     
• Saving Files in 2004 formats (Mac)