Compatibility Mode?

[Troutman]

I just installed Office for Mac 2008. In Word, when I open an existing document, after the filename it shows "[Compatibility Mode]" What is this and is there something I'm supposed to do to get to a "regular mode"? Thanks.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

All it means is that this is a .doc file. There are some features that
will only work in the new .docx file format, so it gives you a warning.

 

[Reno]

Ab compatibility: I just loaded Office for Mac 08 also. My word docs were from years of Word including 2004 for the last several years. I'm working on about 30 docs right now and EVERY single time I save, a huge box with options for what format I want to save it in. I've tried Word 97-2004, I've tried Word docx, and it then asks me if I want to replace the older doc with the same name with this present doc. I say yes, then next time I push apple s, the entire process happens over again. I cleared the check box in compatibility preference box and even restarted Word, but this keeps happening. It is very annoying, slowing me down and I am throwing myself out the window in 6 minutes. Do you have any idea what's going on?
Much Thanks.
Reno

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Reno:

I think what is happening is this: When you "Save" in .docx, Word will
(must!) add a .docx extension to the file name.

If your original files are saved without file extensions, Mac OS X will see
this as a different file. So it never DOES overwrite the old version.

It's a bug in the user interface of Word.

Save to a different file name, and it will be fine next time

It's probably a good idea to save upgrades to legacy files to a different
file name every time. There are circumstances where Word 2008 will fail to
re-code the original document correctly into .docx.

It's a bug when it happens, but that won't help if you have just overwritten
the legacy file and can't go back...

Cheers

Ab compatibility: I just loaded Office for Mac 08 also. My word docs were from
years of Word including 2004 for the last several years. I'm working on about
30 docs right now and EVERY single time I save, a huge box with options for
what format I want to save it in. I've tried Word 97-2004, I've tried Word
docx, and it then asks me if I want to replace the older doc with the same
name with this present doc. I say yes, then next time I push apple s, the
entire process happens over again. I cleared the check box in compatibility
preference box and even restarted Word, but this keeps happening. It is very
annoying, slowing me down and I am throwing myself out the window in 6
minutes. Do you have any idea what's going on?
Much Thanks.
Reno

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John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Joshua Jendza]

I just ran into this problem myself. My office hasn't upgraded to the latest and "greatest" version of office yet so no one else can open .docx files. I think the most annoying part of this is that the preferences box lets you change the compatibility profile to that of a docx file, rescan for compatibility, and it'll give you a clean bill of health until you restart the program. A little explanation of why the compatibility issue exists would be FREAKIN' SPECTACULAR. It's is especially confusing because the compatibility report actually tells me that the compatibility has been set to "Word 6.0/95" when it was actually set to 2004.

The first time I ran into this I thought the file was corrupted since it wouldn't let me change the compatibility profile and I re-typed the whole thing by hand (no cut and paste) trying to fix it.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

The first time I ran into this I thought the file was corrupted since it wouldn't let me change the compatibility profile and I re-typed the whole thing by hand (no cut and paste) trying to fix it.

What do you mean no cut and paste? If you think Word 2008 can't cut and
paste just because the icons aren't right there on the toolbar--well,
change that attitude, because it is not serving you well. Word can do a
million things that aren't right in front of you on the toolbar.

Cut and Paste are also on the Edit menu, and the same keyboard shortcuts
cmd-x and cmd-v (cmd-c for Copy) that work in every single Mac
application continue to work in Word 2008.