Where is That Command?

For anyone who is familiar with Word 2003 and then moves to Word 2007, finding where items are located can be tricky. There is a great reference site that will allow you to choose any Word 2003 command and see where that same command is found in Word 2007.

Click here to access the interactive guide.

Opening Office 2007 Documents Revisited

I use Office 2003, yet when I received an e-mail from our State Department of Education with an attachment saved in Word 2007, I had no problem opening it. Within an hour, however, I received another e-mail from the same person saying they had gotten complaints from people who for some reason could not open the attachment. The new e-mail simply included all of the information from the attachment pasted in the text of the e-mail message.

The very next day, I received an e-mail with a Word 2007 attachment from another person in the same department. You guessed it, within an hour, I was looking at a second e-mail, this time with the same attachment saved in Word 2003.

I can only imagine how many phone calls, e-mails, and people who became involved over something that we all need to deal with.

I talked about the problem and the simple solution here.

Since that post, Office 2007 has become more prevalent, and the information in that post is even more needed now than it was months ago.

Dealing with Office 2007 Documents

In the last month, four different people have approached me with the same problem. They were sent a Word document which they could not open, even though they regularly use Word. In all four cases, the problem was the same: The document was saved in Word 2007 and the recipient was using Word 2003.

Here are two piece of information everyone needs to know:

1. Office 2003 will not open an Office 2007 document.
2. A free converter is available which will allow Office 2007 documents to be opened with Office 2003.

This problem is going to become more and more prevalent as more people make the switch to Office 2007, generally by virtue of purchasing a new computer. The very large percentage of us who are still doing just fine with Office 2003 won't be able to open documents from the growing percentage who made the switch.

What's the solution? Don't wait until you are faced with that "must open" document that just won't open. Get the converter while you are thinking about it. You are just a couple of mouse clicks away right this minute, so why not knock it out right now?

To get that converter, click here.

With a DSL connection, the download takes roughly five minutes.

Once you download the converter, you may wish to copy the installer to a flash drive. You will then be able to load that converter on your laptop or whip out the flash drive when a co-worker is running into his/her own problem opening a Word 2007 document!

You can even save those documents once you open them. Go to "Save As" and choose "Word Document" as the file type.

A few mouse clicks to download and install that converter, and then I can open anything saved in Office 2007. That's easy enough I will actually do it!