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Compatibility in Word 2007

My name is Zeyad Rajabi and I'm a program manager on the Word team. I work on file format related issues, including HTML support in Word. 

Compatibility in Word 2007 – Part I

There has been a lot of discussion around the new default file formats we are introducing to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. So what about the older file formats? When I say older file formats I am referring the following three:

  1. .doc
  2. .dot
  3. .xml (Word 2003 XML Format)

In the next three posts I will talk about the following scenarios:

  1. Opening or creating older file formats in Word 2007
  2. Saving or converting an older file format to one of our new Open XML Formats ( .docx, .docm, .dotx, .dotm) in Word 2007
  3. Saving one of our new Open XML Formats to an older file format in Word 2007

The first scenario of opening or creating older file formats in Word 2007 will result in Word being in Compatibility Mode. Without getting into too much detail about Compatibility Mode, Compatibility Mode ensures that documents created from older versions of Word will look the same in Word 2007. This mode also ensures that the editing environment of Word 2007 is similar to Word 2003. Compatibility Mode will result in some new Word 2007 features being disabled.

The second scenario of saving or converting an older file format to an Open XML Format is about getting out of Compatibility Mode and into Full Functionality Mode. Full Functionality Mode will give you access to all the new features of Word 2007. I will call this process of going from Compatibility Mode to Full Functionality Mode Convert.

The third scenario of saving from an Open XML Format to an older file format is about getting into Compatibility Mode from Full Functionality Mode. I will call this process of going from Full Functionality Mode to Compatibility Mode Down-Convert.

For my next three posts it will help to refer to this diagram to understand what's going on:

Next Time

Don't worry if you are a little uncertain as to what Compatibility Mode is, in my next post I will talk in more detail about Compatibility Mode and what that means to you in Word 2007.

Let me know if you have any specific questions or comments that you would like me to address here or in future posts.

Zeyad Rajabi

Program Manager

Microsoft Office Word

 

Published Wednesday, September 27, 2006 5:42 PM by wrdblog
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Comments

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Friday, September 29, 2006 5:54 PM by Brian Jones: Open XML Formats

# re: Compatibility in Word 2007

When a 2007 document has 2007-only features, and you down-convert it, the features will dissappear, I assume.  If you re-convert it again, do the features come back, or are they lost forever?

Thanks, Jake
Saturday, September 30, 2006 10:18 AM by Jake

# re: Compatibility in Word 2007

I own a transcription service, and we do all of our work in Word. We also use Abacus (line-counting program), Shorthand (word expander), and Spellex Plus (medical/RX/veterinary spellchecker) when we transcribe. We do use templates and macros as well.  If we switch to Office 2007, will we still be able to use all of these programs?

p_flutie@yahoo.com
Sunday, October 01, 2006 8:31 PM by Pam

# re: Compatibility in Word 2007

Jake that is a great question that will be answered in future posts. The quick answer is that some features will come back when converted back to an Open XML Format.

Pam you should be able to still use those programs you listed. Although we have changed our UI for Office 2007, we still allow for older add-ins to work properly. With Office 2007, you will still be able to open and use older templates and macros.

Zeyad Rajabi (MS)

Monday, October 02, 2006 1:10 PM by wrdblog

# Compatibility in Word 2007 – Part II

In today's post I am going to talk about opening or creating older file formats (.doc, .dot, .xml [Word

Tuesday, October 03, 2006 1:55 PM by The Microsoft Office Word Team's Blog

# re: Compatibility in Word 2007

We're currently having difficulties with our Word Add-In in Word 2007.  The menus don't seem to appear, and our alterred context menus don't appear either.

We can see that the Add-In is "installed" through Word Options.

Are we supposed to see (at least) our main menu on the ribbon somewhere?

Tuesday, October 03, 2006 9:12 PM by Carl Scarlett

# re: Compatibility in Word 2007

Hi Carl,

It’s difficult for me to assess what is causing your add-in menu to not show up in the add-in ribbon without looking at the add-in itself. Jensen Harris talks about how older add-ins still work with Office 2007, even with the new UI. Please reference

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/27/485597.aspx

Thanks,

Zeyad Rajabi (MS)

Wednesday, October 04, 2006 1:03 PM by wrdblog

# re: Compatibility in Word 2007

Re: Jake's question on round-tripping, this is critical. I consider it a major bug that you'll be flattening the new citation field to plain text when opening the files in previous versions. And I'm not seeing any technical reason why this must be the case.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006 1:17 PM by Bruce D'Arcus

# re: Compatibility in Word 2007

Hi Bruce,

I will talk more about Word 2007 features that are not compatible with older file formats in a future post. The main reason citations and bibliography are converted to static text on down-converting is because the older file formats cannot save the necessary data. Our limitations on what we can save when down-converting is really dependant on the file format. Unfortunately, we cannot save certain type of data in a binary doc file and expect users of Word 97-2003 to access that data.

Thanks,

Zeyad Rajabi (MS)

Wednesday, October 04, 2006 3:37 PM by wrdblog

# re: Compatibility in Word 2007

Carl - Let me know if you want to send me your add-in so I can help debug what the issue you are seeing is.

Zeyad Rajabi(MS)

Wednesday, October 04, 2006 5:37 PM by wrdblog

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