Version 3 of the MS Office Compatibility Pack for Office 2007 Files (Open, Edit, Save Office 2007 files in Office 2000,XP, 2003...) is now available

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

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Users of the Microsoft Office XP and 2003 programs Word, Excel, or PowerPoint—please install all High-Priority updates from Microsoft Update before downloading the Compatibility Pack.

By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see Knowledge Base article 924074.

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V3 of the Office Compatibility Pack for Office 2007 is now out.

If you can't upgrade to Office 2007 with this at least you can open Office 2007 format files (DocX, XlsX, PptX, etc).

You'll be seeing more and more Office 2007 format (Open XML) files soon. In my work life, we're seeing Office 2007 files already coming in (my work life is in EDD/Electronic Data Discovery, ESI/Electronically Stored Information, etc, business). Which feels like a pretty fast adoption rate...

Open XML also is so much easier to generate dynamically, on the server, at runtime, etc that it will quickly become a preferred document delivery method.

(via ActiveWin - Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats v3)

 

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MS Office Compatibility Pack for Office 2007 Files (Open, Edit, Save Office 2007 files in Office 2000,XP, 2003...)