Number 287 - April 2007

Earlier Office Suite Conversions For Office 2007 Documents
by Ray Isenson, Central Coast Computer Club via the March 2007 User Friendly, Journal of the Los Angeles Computer Society
During the brief look at the differences between Microsoft Office 2007 and Office 2003, I mentioned that in the Office 2007 Suite Microsoft has introduced the XML-based default file formats. The versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint have new extensions; .docx, .xlsx and. pptx, respectively. Consequently users of older Office Suites; 2003, 2000, Office 97 or Office XP will not be able to open these files.    In order to minimize the difficulties that this could cause folks, who receive documents from folks who do install the new office suite, Microsoft has been quietly shipping "Office 2007 awareness patches" to Office XP and Office 2003 users who have been diligently keeping their suites current at www.microsoft.com/updates. The patches alert the user to the "2007 Office Compatibility Pack"; a free 27 MByte download. This download can be installed to allow XP and 2003 users to open, edit and save files, if desired, in the new XML format.	Fortunately, it's easy to change an application's XML default back to the (more nearly) universally compatible Office 97 -2003 format. Start by clicking the Office button on the upper left-hand corner of the application, the Options button beneath the list of recent documents, and Save in the left pane of the Options window. Then open the dropdown 'Save files in this format' menu, and choose the 97 -2003 format from it. Or, if you use Microsoft Word 2000 or Microsoft Word 2002 to read or write documents containing complex scripts, please see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/92545l for information to enable Word 2007 documents to be displayed correctly in your version of Word.    Ray Isenson is a member of the Central Coast Computer Club (CCCC), Santa Maria, CA, http://member.apcug.org/fourseas, and may be reached at, risenson@juno.com.
Number 287 - April 2007