Is there any software which will let me read Vista word DOCX files on Word 2003?

Hi,
At RPI, almost everyone has the school computer, which has Vista.
Even the professors do.
So every assignment is sent via docx files, and I cant open them. I usually ask a friend to convert the file into compatibility mode, so that I can open it. (I only use XP and the office 2003 suite)

It is starting to get really annoying.
Is there any software which will let me open the docx windows vista word files on my Windows Xp word 2003 office suite?


Any help would be greatly appreaciated.

K-TRON

 

Have you tried getting in the microsoft compatibility pack?

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...70-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en

http://gecsoft.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-do-i-open-docx-files-in-word-2003.html

Or see here > http://www.technobuzz.net/7-easy-ways-to-open-docx-files/

http://www.technobuzz.net/7-easy-ways-to-open-docx-files/

Or there are online converters too > http://www.docx-converter.com/
http://www.docx2doc.com/

 

actually DOCX is the new standard in Word 2007... which is dumb since the program is set to save to DOCX as default... when you can set it to Word XP/2003.

In any case, you can install the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...70-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en

 

Thanks guys that software worked (compatibility pack), I just tried opening the assignments and it worked

very fast responses
you guys are great

+reps for you guys.
(i'll rep you Gophn when the system allows me to again)

K-TRON

 

Why is it dumb that the default file format is the new standard? Isn't that exactly what you'd expect? Why have a new standard if you're not going to enforce it?

 

Yeah, actually .docx is better since it results in a smaller file size due to some compression.
I think I got the MS Compatibility Pack through MS Update.

 

It's dumb because the whole world is not at that level yet so you have incompatible files now. It's expected but it's still not always the best way to go right away.

If it was enforced, MS wouldn't have put out compatibility pack so it could be read, resaved as doc., and then sent back out again if necessary. Which is what most people do at my work (we're not at 2007 yet). It's not cheap to move 2000+ computers to 2007 version just because there is a new fileformat that we "should" support. Doc format works just fine.

 

people will always resist change, even if its good for them. Change only comes about because someone else has forced it upon you. If MS followed the same train of thought you've outlined above we wouldn't ever progress.

P.S - I know many big corporations that use office 2007. My prev workplace did too.

 

Don't worry about DOCX anyway, OOXML won't be the standard for the next update of Office 2007 SP2, ODF will finally be supported (unless they decide otherwise, and that wouldn't surprise me too much).

And if you do use ooxml formats (docx, xlsx, etc.), I advise against it because even Microsoft has a hard time supporting their own formats. Save a word document in docx, and you'll get weird formatting if you save it as a 2003 doc. Just horrible.

 

btw K-Tron the format difference has nothing to do with Vista whatsoever. It's just Office 2003 vs. Office 2007. And either one can run on either XP or Vista.

 

thanks guys, the problem has been resolved thanks to the compatibility pack.

my word files are generally small, so I dont have to worry much about compression.

K-TRON