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David Overton's Blog » How to open Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007) files on Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 by downloading the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for File Formats
How to open Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007) files on Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 by downloading the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for File Formats

I get asked this question quite often, so I thought I would point out the download location for the tool to make files work between Office 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007. Just to cover off some details - Office 2007 can save in Office 97-2003 file format as well as the new Open XML and PDF file formats.  Using this download, files can be opened and saved in Office 2007 format in Office 2000 and later.

  • Of special note is that if you are using Microsoft Office XP or 2003  you MUST install all High-Priority updates from Microsoft Update before downloading the Compatibility Pack.
  • Also, if you don't have those Office programs, but you have the viewers (Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003) then you can use the pack to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see Knowledge Base article 924074.
  • Also Note: 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/925451 for information to enable Word 2007 documents to be displayed correctly in your version of Word.
  • Finally, if you are planning on installing this for lots of users the administrative template for the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint converters contained within the Compatibility Pack is available for download.

 

thanks

David

 

Posted Sun, Apr 15 2007 12:01 AM by David Overton
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Comments

Knud Soelvbjerg wrote re: How to open Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007) files on Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 by downloading the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for File Formats
on Tue, Apr 17 2007 2:35 PM

Many thanks for your info.

How would you go about installing the pack on a Win3003 server with MSOffice 2003?

Regards

[email protected]

Peer Tavori wrote re: How to open Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007) files on Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 by downloading the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for File Formats
on Thu, May 3 2007 12:10 PM
The file format converters refuse to install under W98/ME. Is there any other way to read Office 2007 files under Office 2000-Versions that run on WW98/ME?
David Overton wrote re: How to open Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007) files on Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 by downloading the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for File Formats
on Thu, May 3 2007 4:07 PM

Peer,

I doubt that we will still supprt Windows 98/Me with them being soooo old.  Sorry

David

leah wrote re: How to open Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007) files on Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 by downloading the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for File Formats
on Thu, Jun 21 2007 9:09 PM

its all too technical for me... i just want ot know if i have been runing windows xp, word 2000 and have saved files on an external drive... and want now to purchase a new computer which will run vista... will i be able to transfer and use my word files

Many wrote re: How to open Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007) files on Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 by downloading the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for File Formats
on Tue, Sep 25 2007 4:03 PM

are there some converts to windows 98? i cant open office 2007 word documents in windows 98. thanks!

David Overton's Blog wrote How to make Office 2007 always save in Office 97-2003 format
on Wed, Nov 28 2007 9:23 PM

This is another area I get a lot of questions, so I thought I would share the answer. While my person

swapnil wrote re: How to open Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007) files on Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 by downloading the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for File Formats
on Mon, Jul 7 2008 9:52 AM

thanks dear

uday wrote re: How to open Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007) files on Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 by downloading the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for File Formats
on Sun, Dec 7 2008 4:10 PM

I tried to run the compatibility pack on my Windows Vista machine since I have word 2000 docs as part of office 2000 and did not want to buy office 2007.  i did create some word 2007 docs in the trial period of office 2007.

the pack does not execute on my vista pc... any ideas to make it work? so i can now save down my word 2007 files as word 2000?

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