Opening Microsoft Office 2007 Files in Microsoft Office XP

I recently had a vendor send us an Excel spreadsheet that he created in Microsoft Word 2007 format. Unfortunately, our firm still only has Microsoft Office XP and was curious as to how this would work.

I remember in the past that you can always downgrade files. For example, if I have Microsoft Excel XP and would like to send a file to a client that only has Microsoft Excel 97 (which was a horrible disaster for Microsoft, since there were quite a few bugs in this version), you could save the file as a Microsoft Excel 97 version. The only downfall was that if you accidentally sent the client a Microsoft Excel XP version, they wouldn't be able to open it.

The good news is that Microsoft has come out with a patch for this. If you receive a file that was written in the Microsoft Office 2007 format, you can download the patch called Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.

You can now go ahead and open any file in this format. It will take a short period of time to convert the file each time you open it, but it saves you time and money in the long run.

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Until next time,

Take care - of your clutter!