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Summary: Office 2007 introduces a new XML based file format for its documents. There's a download for older versions off office to read and write the new format. I have Microsoft Office 2003 on my computer. Friends of mine are sending me e-mail with attachments but are using Office 2007. Is there any way to convert Office 2003 to open e-mails from Office 2007? Office 2007 introduces a new file format which is, of course, incompatible with previous versions of Microsoft office. So if you receive a document that someone has saved in Office 2007 format, but all you have is an earlier version of Office that can't read it, there are some steps you need to take. But I also need to nit-pick one part of your question as well. • You asked "Is there any way to convert Office 2003 to open e-mails from Office 2007?" Emails should open just fine. Email messages are sent and received in a format common to all mail programs, and no conversion should be necessary. You should also be able to save any attached documents. Again, attachments themselves are encoded into email in a standard way that has not changed. It's the format of the attached files themselves that has changed, and the program that's used to open the attached files needs to be able to handle their new file format. You could, of course, ask your friends to save their files in the older format. This isn't the first time Office has changed formats, Microsoft Office has a fine track record of being able to save in older formats each time they change to new ones. Your friend could save his file in Office 2003 format before he sends it to you and you'd be able to read it like nothing changed. What's unique this time is that Microsoft has made converters available for older versions of Office. Download and install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. (Take special care to read the Overview on that page - it's important that you have all High Priority updates from Microsoft Update installed before you install the converters.) The compatibility pack works with Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003. Related:
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".. pack works with Office 200.." It only feels that old Leo (grin) Posted by: Dan ullman at March 9, 2007 09:04 AMWhoopsie. Thanks - fixed. :) Posted by: Leo Notenboom at March 9, 2007 09:16 AMIt 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. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - - From the MS page linked to above: "The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Leo iD8DBQFF8vyzCMEe9B/8oqERAt+8AJ9GiBDDeBAyPJl4ibRcQHVHy0L86QCeNZhJ 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? thanx Leo! this article was really helpful! 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? Posted by: Archie Galloway at March 19, 2007 04:21 PMcool xD Posted by: Ibish at July 2, 2007 02:26 AMDear 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. Posted by: Carmen at April 2, 2008 12:33 AMPost a comment on "How can I open Office 2007 files in older versions of Office?":
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