How can I open Office 2007 files in older versions of Office?

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".. pack works with Office 200.."

It only feels that old Leo (grin)

Whoopsie. Thanks - fixed. :)

It seems as if Microsoft is trying to push Office 2007 by excluding people without an old version of Office from viewing files in the new format.

Up till now, Microsoft has offered free Viewer programs for the office applications which let people with Open Office, Works, the Corel suite or whatever, view files created in Office. There doesn't seem to be a viewer program for Word 2007 or for Excel 2007 (there is one for PowerPoint 2007). I wonder why.

The advantage of a stand-alone viewer program is that it is less intrusive than updating an older version of Office and less likely to cause a problem (always a possibility with any patch/update). Then again, it is a viewer, not an updater.

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- - From the MS page linked to above:

"The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the
Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint
Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats."

Leo
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comment re Office 2007 related to question Microsoft Word with Office 2001 and was not backed up when XP replaced ME and I have 6 CDs but am told that this should be for a NEW Computer...what trouble might I incur to try to download the CDs and then use 2007?
I currectly use Open Office but I miss Microsoft Word for many other applications.

thanx Leo! this article was really helpful!
cheers

I am trying to open an excel 2007 file on a PC that has Office 2003, I loaded the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack File Formats, but I still get an error saying "The converter could not convert the file." Can you help me?

cool xD

Dear Leo,

My notebook is on Win Vista with MS Office 2003. Recently I have been received mails with attachments of office documents(Word or Excel without the usual extensions ie .doc or .xls) which I can only opened when I clicked on it and tried wither to "open with" either excel or word.

I have downloaded and installed both OCONVPCK file , File Format Converters as well as Compatibility Files.

Unfortunately, the problem persists. It will not auto convert files whereby I can open straight away as it is.

Pls help! Thanks.

see if you can install this update for office. It should allow you
to view docx files and convert them to regular doc files.

The update is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466

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