Microsoft Office 2007 improved upon many features of Office 2003. Along with the "ribbon" user interface, the latest version of Office uses a new file format.

This can cause a few headaches for those remaining Office 2003 users. Friends, family, and colleagues may complain that they can’t open Office 2007 documents they have received from you or other people using the latest version of Office.


Problem Solving

There are a couple of ways to tackle this problem. 

1. If you’re using Office 2007, you can save your documents as previous versions and can be set as default to save files as a 2003 version.
   
   
2. If you don’t have Office 2007, download the Office Compatibility Pack. It allows you to open, edit and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the file formats new to Microsoft Office Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used with Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats.

Office Compatibility Pack

Downloading the Office Compatibility Pack will only take you a few minutes and will save a lot of hassle in the long run.

It's important to be aware of this issue and pay attention to the file format options available to you when you are saving your documents.

Some 3rd party software may not recognise the new file format so you may need to save Microsoft Word and Excel files in the 2003 format. This can be particularly true if you are importing Excel database information.

Enjoy The Advantages

Compatibility teething problems were always expected by Microsoft but the advantages offered by Microsoft Office 2007 make it worthwhile for the user overall.

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