Excel 2007 vs 2003 question

[Suzanne]

I need wording help. We have upgraded to Office 2007 and I have a LOT of
excel sheets that are fairly complicated. I have a board that many say they
cannot (?) download the compatability software and therefore want me to save
EVERYTHING back in 2003 and send it to them in that. This is just crazy. I
have tried to explain that I could lose information, etc. and they still
want me to do it. Can someone give me some wording to convince these people
that this is just a stupid thing to ask of me. Thanks

 

[Jon Peltier]

The "stupid" action was upgrading to 2007 too early for the rest of the
organization. No offense. Perhaps I should say unadvised instead of stupid.
In general, software should not be upgraded until every aspect has been
contemplated. Existing files and code must be tested, and the compatibility
route must be examined, because you will always need to exchange old-format
files with customers, vendors, and colleagues.

The only information you will lose by back-saving a workbook is anything
beyond 65536 rows or 256 columns. You may lose the fancy formats, who cares?

- Jon

 

[iliace]

You can lose information even if they do use the compatibility
software. Your best bet is to save files in Excel 2003 format so that
at least you can have the compatibility checker tell you whether there
might be problems. Also, it is quite possible that some system
configurations do not allow users to install additional software, like
the compatibility pack.

Couple of things to be aware of:
* New conditional formatting features won't work - use Value Is and
Formula Is, and don't use Stop If True, and no more than 3
* Structured references and various table features won't carry over,
but will convert properly
* PivotTables need to be created in compatibility mode to work in
previous version of Excel
* Several functions only work in older versions with Analysis ToolPak
installed
* Certain other functions don't work in earlier versions at all
(IFERROR(), SUMIFS(), etc)
* Adhere to 7 levels of function nesting, 1000-character formula, and
30 function arguments limits
* As John mentioned, only a 65,000x250 grid is available in Excel
2003 and prior
* Most color formats will be downgraded when converting to Excel
97-2003 file format

Those are the only compatibility issues that I've run into. Hope that
helps.