File compatibility issues for users of Office 2007

Almost all PCs within the College are running Microsoft Office 2003 applications; this includes Word 2003, Excel 2003 and PowerPoint 2003.

If you have bought a new PC recently, you may have the latest version of Microsoft Office, Office 2007, installed, rather than Office 2003.

Office 2007 files are saved in a different format. For example, Word 2007 saves its documents as .docx files, whereas Word 2003 saves documents in plain .doc format.

All the PCs within ITS workstation rooms have Office 2007 converters installed which allows them to open the new .docx files. If you bring in a Word 2007 document from home, you will be able to open it using a computer in the workstation rooms. You will also be able to open Word 2003 documents with your copy of Word 2007.

However, if you have Office 2007 you need to be aware that not everyone will be able to open your documents. Anyone with an Apple Macintosh computer, or an older version of Office, without the converters installed, will not be able to open an Office 2007 document.

To avoid this problem, you can save your documents in the older format (Office 97 - 2003). To do this, go to the Office menu (the round button in the top left corner of your screen) and choose Save As, then choose Word 97-2003 document, or Excel 97-2003 workbook etc.

If you have Office 2003 on your own computer and you want to be able to open the new Office 2007 documents, then you can download the converters yourself. Go to www.microsoft.com and look for the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.

Unfortunately Microsoft have not yet released converters for Apple Macintosh computers, so if you have an Apple, you will be unable to open Office 2007 documents unless they are saved as the old format.