Sunday, December 22, 2013

Changing The File Format In Microsoft Office Applications

Microsoft has always revived its products and services from time to time, and thus, provided users with a product line that is always updated with advanced tools and functions. Microsoft Office suite is such a productivity applications package that has been updated regularly. The recent versions of Microsoft Office however, employ a different file format that is incompatible with the previous versions.

Millions of individual users, businesses, and educational institutions use Microsoft Office applications on a daily basis, and heavily rely on the programs in the Office suite like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook for their routine work. Numerous of these users are still on the traditional versions of Microsoft Office and thus, a change in the file formats may lead to complications in accessing files and working with the programs.

Where older versions of Microsoft Office use .doc format for Word, .ppt for PowerPoint, and .xls for Excel, the latest Office programs save the files in .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx formats respectively. This restricts a user on an old Office program to open or edit a file in the new format. However, the users with the latest Office versions can view, open, or edit the files in the older format without any hitches.

To deal with the issues faced by traditional applications users, Microsoft offers a compatibility tool for Office 2003, which can be downloaded from Microsoft’s official website. This utility allows users to view and edit the files in the newer format. Yet again, this tool may not be much of a helpful option when it comes to sharing the files in the new format with others over the internet. Thus, it is advised to change the file format to the older state, which is compatible with every Office version.

Below given are the steps provided by Microsoft Office help line to adjust the program settings and save the files in the traditional format automatically. Here we will discuss about how to save files in older format in Microsoft Word application. The same steps can be used for altering the settings in PowerPoint and Excel as well.

Instructions

  • Open Microsoft Office Word application and click on the Office button.
  • Select Word Options from the resulting menu and move on the Save tab in the consequent window.
  • Opt for Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc) from the drop-down menu for Save files in this format, and click OK.

When you are done with the above steps, the Word files in your computer will be saved in the .doc format automatically, and will be compatible with earlier versions.  If you have any doubts regarding the steps mentioned above, contact Microsoft Office help line for assistance.

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