Problems with Microsoft Office 2007

What are the issues I may face with office 2007?

Office 2004, 2003, XP, 2000, 97, cannot open office 2007 documents. This includes all word, powerpoint, access and excel documents.

Only office 2007 may open office 2007 files unless you have installed a converter for these files.

What are these new format?

The new formats for office 2007 documents all end in x, ie .docx, .pptx, .xlsx.

Does this really affect me?

Yes, all users are affected by this issue, absolutely no one is immune.

How can I resolve this issue?

Windows users may download the office 2007 file format compatibility program from www.microsoft.com. The program however crashes often and is not very stable so users should be cautious when utilizing this program. The program will integrate itself with your current version of microsoft office.

I have a mac, what can I do?

Mac users currently have a variety of open source alternatives as well as microsoft products which will support the new mircrosoft document format.

Mac users may install openoffice (a free MS office alternative)
Openoffice is located at www.openoffice.org

Neo office (a free MS office alternative based on openoffice) also supports office 2007.
Neoffice is available at www.neooffice.org

Mac users with a virtual pc or parallels emulator may install the microsoft office compatability program into their virtual windows machine if they have office installed on that virtual machine.

Microsoft Open XML File Format Converter allows you to convert Office 2007/2010 files so that they can be opened in a previous version of Microsoft Office.
The Open XML File Format Converter is available at www.microsoft.com

Mac users may also install the new Office 2010 for Mac OSX.

FYI: The computer lab windows pcs have also been equipped with the capability to convert office 2007 documents

I have linux, what are my options?

Linux users may upgrade to a version of openoffice that supports microsoft xml documents.

At present abiword does not support the new microsoft document format.
Linux users may also mv *.docx *.zip unzip the file and extract the text information from the xhtml document in that file.