Open Office 2007 documents on Office 2003 or XP

Sometimes I need to send a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet to someone, and often enough I get a reply from that person saying they are unable to open the document I sent. I use Microsoft Office 2007 and many are still using Microsoft Office 2003 or even Microsoft Office XP. As you probably have noticed, documents created by Word 2007 end with the extension .docx instead of the familiar .doc from previous versions, and Excel 2007 files have the extensions .xlsx, instead of .xls. Of course it is
possible to save a document on a previous file format within Office 2007, but then some formatting options may be lost, or you may not want to have the trouble to save documents in an older version.

If any of you has had problems to open these Office 2007 documents (.docx, .xlsx), then here is the solution. Microsoft has made available a little program, for free, that will allow you to open and edit Office 2007 documents on your Office 2003 or XP. All you need to do is click on the following link, download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack and install it!!!

Here is the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466

The file is 27.5 MB and shouldn't take too long to download if you are on broadband.

You can also download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack Service Pack 1 (SP1) with the latest updates from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9a1822c5-49c6-47bd-8bec-0d68693ca564&DisplayLang=en