Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
".docx" is the new extension used by Microsoft Word 2007. There are a couple of approaches if you're exchanging documents with users of older versions.
When I try to attach a document to emails I have discovered that the recipients cannot open them. They're telling me that there's a 'docx' on the end of the subject. I didn't have this problem with my old computer, I now have a gateway XP Pro.
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I'm going to guess that with your new computer you also got some new software. In fact, I'm going to further guess one of those new software packages is Microsoft Office 2007.
If that's the case, then what we have here is a classic cross-version compatibility issue. Fortunately there are two ways to solve the problem.
You can solve it, or your recipients can.
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".docx" is the new file extension that Microsoft Word 2007 uses when it saves documents in the new default format. So you might save your document as "letter", but what Word 2007 writes to disk is "letter.docx" where previous versions would write "letter.doc". (I assume that ".docx" means .doc "extended", but that's an unimportant assumption.)
As I said there are two possible solutions.
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Save in the old format
In Word 2007, rather than just hitting Save, click on the "Office Button" to drop down what we used to think of as the "File" menu, and hover the mouse over Save As:
Note that I've called out the option so save as a Word 97-2003 Document. This will save the file in the format used by these earlier versions of Word, and will do so with the normal ".doc" extension.
If you always want to save in the older compatible format you can click on the Word Options button (always visible at the bottom of the menu displayed with the "Office Button"), and then click on Save at the left of the resulting dialog:
As you can see, you can select the Save files in this format dropdown. The default, as you might expect, is Word Document (*.docx). Change that to Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc) and your documents will be saved in the old compatible way.
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Open in the new format
I actually covered this in a previous article: there is a "compatibility pack" that users of older versions of Word (and Excel and PowerPoint) can download and install to enable those versions of the product to read the newer file formats directly.
In your scenario you would do nothing different. You'd keep sending out the new ".docx" documents. Your recipients, however, would all need to download and install the converters to be able to read what you've sent; or upgrade to Office 2007.
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Which is the right solution for you depends on your situation. If your recipients expect to have lots of .docx files coming their way or just want to be ready if and when they do, then perhaps asking them to install the converter isn't that big a deal. On the other hand saving in the older formats to begin with minimizes the impact on them - at least for documents that you send.
Article C3038 - May 28, 2007
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
sent post prematurely>>Details for above "Problem Solved". Just renamed the file extension to .doc >> Now I can open all files that were previously "stuck" in DOCX.At Leo's suggestion, I changed the "Save Files in this Format" to Word 97-2003 Documents. WE LOVE YOU LEO !! Thanks for the forum.Trish2040
Posted by: Trish2040 at July 29, 2011 2:39 PMI am so struggling here. I am writing in Microsoft Office 2007. I write educational materials for teachers. When I send a document to the editor, I goes in the docx format. She can't open the document. I tried saving in the Word 97 -2003 document. All my pages are messed up, text boxes flying everywhere and graphics can't be seen. What am I doing wrong? Getting really frustrated. Thanks for the help.
Posted by: Linda at August 19, 2011 8:41 PMLeo! You're a genius! Thanks for the tip on how to swap to Word saving as a "doc" file instead of a "docx" file. Thanks SO much!
Posted by: Cindy at January 16, 2012 1:12 PMPlease, I am taking University courses (an adult back to school); and I am running Windows XP on my PC. I have never used doc.x files, but this course I'm taking online requires files to be submitted as .doc or .doc s format. Could you please help me figure out how to do this? I do not use Word, so I am not really familiar with that, I only use One Note as a Biology major I don't need these other forms usually. But do for this particular coarse I'm taking. Thank you very much.
Posted by: Sandra G at January 21, 2012 9:33 PMOk, I apologize to bother you again. I printed out this page above and got my Word into the format as you describe. However, when I went to send the document to myself as a test case, my Word won't let me send any emails. So when I hit on "send", it opens a screen in which the email option is all light grey and doesn't work. I have no idea why not. What now? Please advise. Thank you so much.
22-Jan-2012