Q: (from Jessica)
First and foremost, I would like to thank you for coming out to Valparaiso, IN to present Microsoft Vista and Office 2007. I really enjoyed listening to you and having the opportunity to ask questions. I was one of those that received the Launch Microsoft Office 2007 CD! I was trilled about this because I had a brand new laptop sitting at work with no Microsoft Office pre-loaded.
Needless to say, I installed Office 2007 on the new laptop. However, I sent an email to a co-worker who said he was unable to open the attachment (in Word 2007). I was under the impression that there would be no problems with documents in 2003 and 2007, but my trial run proved differently. If I send out documents in Office 2007, will others be able to open them without an update or would they have to update their Office versions prior to being able to open these documents? Is there an update that is already available for these computers?
Thank you for your help!
A:
You are almost there… There are two approaches when using the 2007 Office in a mixed environment with Office 97 thru Office 2003:
1) The 2007 Office can save any file, with ALL of it’s features, in the Office 97-2003 compatible file format. This is perfect if you are sending document outside of your organization where you don’t know what version of Office the recipient might be using.
2) The other technique is to install the free Office Compatibility Pack on the other computer. This will allow an existing version of Office 2000, 2002, or 2003 to read and write the new 2007 Office file format. This is a great solution inside an organization where you have control of the software on the desktops.