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How to Use Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Macintosh Formatted Files in Older Office Application Suites

Index

Overview
Office 2008 for Macintosh
Office 2007 for Windows
Compatibility Pack

Overview

In 2006 Microsoft announced that file formats for Office 2008 (Macintosh) and Office 2007 (Windows) will now have four characters in their extensions rather than the traditional three. This new naming convention stems from the xml technology being used by the software.

Word = .docx
Excel = .xlsx
PowerPoint = .pptx

The new software offers backwards compatibility to older versions and another new feature allows the user to save documents as PDF. For more information on the Open XML format, go to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100069351033.aspx

Office 2008 for Macintosh

By default, Word 2008 is set to open a new document in the new format, .docx. When you save the document you will see the file name appear at the top of the document as filename.docx. To change the file format to an older version of Word or convert the file to the PDF format, do the following:

1. Launch Word 2008
2. Open the .docx document you wish to change to the .doc or .pdf format
3. Select Save As from the File menu
4. A new window will appear, click the Format: drop-down menu to change from a Word Document (.docx) to either Word 97-2004 Document (.doc) or PDF

   

5. Click Save
   • Clicking save will rename your file and change the format from filename.docx to filename.doc [Compatibility Mode].

     

6. You have successfully saved a document in the Office 2004 format.

Note: Some features of Office 2008 may not be compatible with older versions of Office. You may also receive a message from the program stating that data will be lost.

Office 2007 for Windows

The default in Word 2007 is to open a new document in the current format. When you save the document you will see the file name appear at the top of the document as filename.docx. To change this to an older version of Word or create a PDF file you can do the following:

1. Launch Office 2007
2. Open the .docx document you wish to change to the .doc or .pdf format
3. Click on the Office button, and choose Save As then Word 97-2003 Document

   

4. Click Save
5. You have successfully saved a document in the Office 2003 format

Note: Some features of Office 2007 may not be compatible with older versions of Office. You may also receive a message from the program stating that data will be lost.

Compatibility Pack

If you are a user of an older version of Office you may receive a document which is in the new .docx format. You will not be able to open the document and will receive an error message similar to the following:

You can click OK to download the software, or, if worried about Phishing, click the link to go to Microsoft's Download Center for Microsoft's Compatibility Pack download or this link for Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.2.1 (Beta). Questions can be sent to the Office of Information Technology (OIT) Help Desk.