Make Microsoft Office 2003 compatible with Office 2007 formats
By Jonathan Schlaffer
Office 2007 is the next version of the ever popular and standard Microsoft Office Suite and is closely tied with the launch and availability of Vista. Improvements include a new user interface known as the “Ribbon†interface and some new file formats. The last versions were Office 2000, XP and 2003; I have mentioned those for reasons that will become clear later.
Many individuals and businesses have a decision to make, stick with their previous version of Office or upgrade to 2007. Whether or not they or you do depends on several factors. If you are used to the interface in 2003 then 2007 will send you hunting for the feature you are looking for as EVERYTHING has been completely rearranged to fit in with the new “Ribbon†interface.
Now don’t get me wrong, the “Ribbon” interface is more logical and has a nice appearance but there will be a learning curve to it. Office 2007 also offers up a new file format known as Office Open XML. This file format is not (natively) supported by Office 2000, XP or 2003. This is why I mentioned the older versions earlier in the post.
The format is not natively supported and perhaps would have been a deciding factor for many in upgrading but this is not the case. Microsoft has released the Office Compatibility Pack (available at that link) for Office 2000, XP and 2003. This enables those versions of Office to read, write and create Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in Office 2007 formats.
For me, if Office 2003 had not supported the new formats, upgrading to 2007 would have almost been a “no-brainer†but with the Compatibility Pack installed, this is no longer an issue. It also allows me to keep using the interface I know and love while supporting the new formats.
If you wish to upgrade to Office 2007 this compatibility pack will allow users to continue in 2003 and learn 2007 at the same time so by the time the conversion is complete, everyone will have had “face†time with Office 2007 and will know how to use it. The only problem is that you cannot have Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 installed on the same system.
During the install you will have no choice but to overwrite Outlook 2003 with Outlook 2007 but all the other applications will be unaffected if you perform a side-by-side install. The Upgrade install will overwrite all the applications, but it will ask if you want to do that or install Office 2007 alongside Office 2003, an option I reccomend.
To install the Office Compatibility Pack you must be running Windows 2000 with SP4, Windows XP SP1 (or later) or Windows Vista and the applicable version of Office.
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March 22nd, 2007
Good article Jonathan,
Even though Office 2007 uses the Open XML format with 4 char file extension, I think most business and individuals should get use to this “Ribbon” layout. I think microsoft did an excellent job in Office this time.
AL
http://www.dellvista.com
March 22nd, 2007
Yes, I agree that the “Ribbon” layout is very very nice but I find myself poking around in Office 2007 looking for something so I usually go back to 2003 then look up how to find what I needed for the future.
They have done a good job with it but it’s just going to take some transition time. Like I said, I suggest having both 2003 and 2007 installed so users can get used to 2007 and switch to 2003 when they can’t find it or 2007 confuses them.
It’s also not a very compelling reason to upgrade to 2007 when the new formats are supported in 2003 through the compatibility pack. Eventually 2007 will be the standard, it will probably take at least two years before that happens on a large scale.
And thanks for the compliment.
March 25th, 2007
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September 24th, 2007
I am planning to upgrade from 2003 to 2007 but the problem is that am not sure if the file can be opened on latter versions of office. I. e can i open documents writen from 2007 from my 2003 office. Meshack- from Kenya thanks
September 26th, 2007
Software Development Guide
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting
October 4th, 2007
You should not have any problem opening your previous Office 2003 documents (word, excel, etc.) in you Office 2007. Sometimes their are problems though, but it is usually caused by your computer being confused from having both 2003 and 2007 Office on your computer.
Chris,
BaselineSoftware.com