Open Office 2007 documents without Office 2007

There must be something about years ending in “7.” The last time Microsoft made significant changes to the file formats used by its Office suite was for the Office 97 release. They did it again for Office 2007. As Office 2007 becomes more popular, this is creating problems for people who are still using — and are perfectly happy with — older versions. It’s an issue for third-party packages, too, such as OpenOffice and WordPerfect Office.

Happily, there are solutions…

If you are using Office 2000, Office XP or Office 2003, download and install the “Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.” It’s free for anyone to download and requires no validation nonsense. According to Microsoft, “by installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able to open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.” Do pay attention to the write-up on the download page, though, including the part about grabbing the latest security updates.

If you are using OpenOffice, just upgrade to the latest release (version 3.1 at the time this was written). It costs nothing and the update process is not unduly burdensome. If you’re running a fairly recent version of OpenOffice, you’ll likely be offered updates automatically.

If you are using WordPerfect Office X4 or later, you should be more or less OK. For earlier versions, contact Corel for compatibility information.

And, finally, if you’re using a non-Microsoft office suite and are not running Windows Vista or later, you’ll need the new Office 2007 fonts. See the “How to get the Office 2007 fonts” post for details.