Office 2003 compatibility

[alex]

I want to buy Office 2003, but I'm concerned about
compatibility with previous versions of office. My friend
has installed Office 2003 and when he sends me Word files
by e-mail from Word 2003, I can't open them using my Word
97.

Microsoft's website says it's compatible, but is there any
known issues about it's incompatibility??

Alex.

 

[Eric Lawrence [MSFT]]

When you say "can't open them" can you elaborate on what happens?

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[Guest]

From what I've seen with Office products and versions,
you can go forwards, but not backwards. In other words...
you can open a 97 document in 2003, but not a 2003
document in 97.

This has improved greatly with 2000 and up. They seem to
work both ways, for the most part.

Hope this helps.

 

[Beth Melton]

You can't?? The file format for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint has been
the same since Office 97.

The only exception to this is Access. You can convert an Access 97
database to an Access 2000 file format which can be opened in Access
2000 - 2003. However the Access 2000 and 2002 file format can not be
opened in Access 97. (Access 2003 uses the Access 2002 file format.)
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

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