Mac Office 2004 vs Office 2007

[Charles J. Rice]

Forgive me if this has already been covered, but I am concerned that the
files generated using the new Office 2007 for PCs will not be compatible
with previous versions of Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and especially
will not be compatible with Mac Office 2004 files.

Any real reason for concern?

Charles

 

[William Smith]

Forgive me if this has already been covered, but I am concerned that the
files generated using the new Office 2007 for PCs will not be compatible
with previous versions of Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and especially
will not be compatible with Mac Office 2004 files.

Any real reason for concern?

Hi Charles!

Free converters for Office 2003 (Windows) have been released and are
available here in this Office Compatibility Pack
<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=941B3470-3AE9-4
AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466>.

Similar converters for Office 2004 (Mac) are slated to go into public
beta this spring
<http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jan07/01-09MacworldPR.mspx

.

These converters should work cross-platform as well, allowing you to
open Office 2007 (Windows) files in Office 2004 (Mac) as well as open
Office 2008 (Mac) files in Office 2003 (Windows).

Hope this helps! bill

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Charles:

No reason for concern at all. I flip between the versions here with no
problems or issues.

There is, currently, a source of "irritation". The Converters for Mac
Office have not appeared yet (the PC ones have, but not the Mac ones).
Microsoft had hoped to have them available by now: obviously they're running
late in development.

The "Converters" are much more substantial than last time: they offer full
read-write compatibility between Office X, 2004 and 2007/8. Which means
they're four times the size! Obviously in a large and complex development
project such as this (those "converters" contain most of the "engine" of the
actual applications concerned) you sometimes do get delays and bugs that
take time to resolve.

I would expect the converters to appear within "weeks, not months".

Until they do, you will have to ask Office 2007 users to save back a version
for you. When they do that, some things, such as the new graphics in Office
2007 documents, will be converted into static uneditable pictures. So don't
back-convert unless you have to.

Cheers

--

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs

+61 4 1209 1410, <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]