Some Students and Faculty have purchased new computers that have the Microsoft VISTA operating system and Office 2007 applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint installed. By default, when you use these programs, the software loads a file extension. This extension allows your operating system to determine the software you need to use to open the file.

Microsoft has changed this automatically loaded extension which is causing some problems when trying to upload these assignments or open them. Here is what you would see as a file name when you save a file using Office 2007 software:

To insure compatibility so others can view your assignments, we suggest the following:

1. Save your Office 2007 file as an .RTF (rich text format) document.
   
   IMPORTANT: Use the RTF option only if your file contains ONLY TEXT. If your file contains images, the conversion will create a significantly larger file, e.g. a 341KB files turns into a 9.6MB file.
   
2. Save your Office 2007 files as Office 2003 files.
   
3. Set the default file saving format in Office 2007 to Office 2003.
   
4. Install Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Office 2007 File formats on your computer if you do not current have Office 2007.

Saving An Office 2007 File as an Office 2003 File

When saving a file created in Office 2007, use the “Save As” feature rather than the “Save” feature. Choose Word 97-2003 format. Your document is saved as a .doc file rather than a .docx file and can be opened and read by older versions of Microsoft Word.

Use the same process when saving an Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation to insure compatibility with those viewing your file.

Setting Your Default to Always Save As Office 2003

Use the following steps o set Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel to automatically save as an Office 2003 file.

If you are using Microsoft XP operating system and would like to view files with the .docx, .xlsx and .pptx extensions, you will need to download Microsoft’s Compatibility Pack. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Your system (Microsoft XP and Microsoft 2003 users) should have all the most recent updates installed including all High-Priority/Required updates accessed on the Microsoft Update page found at http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us.
2. After installing these updates, download the Compatibility Pack found at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en, saving it to a specified folder or to your desktop.
3. Double click the FileFormatConverters.exe on your desktop.
4. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the installation.
5. Once finished, delete the file downloaded from Microsoft that you saved on your desktop.

Problems When Opening a Microsoft 2007 Document

When you open a .docx (word 2007) file, IE says it a zip file.... so it asks to save it somewhere rather than just opening the file. When you extract the file, it breaks out into a number of pieces that are unusable. Don’t open this file if you receive this message. It is too problematic. Ask the person to send a Word 2003 compatible document or install the Compatibility Pack to be able to read the .docx file.

After saving it to your computer and double clicking on the file, you may also see the message shown below. See Installing the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack to Read Office 2007 File Formats for more information on the proper installation of this patch.

MAC OS Users Reading Microsoft 2007 Documents

Reading Microsoft 2007 documents can be problematic when using a MAC. There are converters online that you can use. Here are two sites where dashboard widgets were available. We do not warrant these sites but offer them as examples. You should do your own research to determine the most appropriate download site for your system conversion capability.

• DOCX Converter Dashboard Widget found at http://docx-converter.com/widget/
• Mac Softpedia at http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Dashboard-Widgets/Calculate-Convert/Docx-Converter.shtml