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Tek Tip Topic: Microsoft .docx Documents

If you are unable to open the .docx documents coming your way a solution is here and it's easy. You will need to download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack and install it onto your computer; this Pack is essentially a pack of Readers for MS Office 2007 documents. Microsoft warns that you firstly need to install the newly released Service Pack 3 but many - including us here at BetaTek - have installed the reader with no problems at all prior to a Service Pack 3 install. In the workplace you may need your Tech staff to do the installing for you. To get to the correct place to download the Pack you can Google 'Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack' (without the quote marks) and select the link to Microsoft's download page for the Pack or you can copy/paste www.microsoft.com/downloads/ into your internet browser and from there, follow the link to the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack download page.

If you already have Microsoft Office 2007 on your system you may have people complaining to you that they are unable to open the documents you are sending them and some workplaces may not let staff install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack in order to let them open and read your documents. What you can do from your end is to save your MS Word, MS Excel, etc documents in the older format. You can do this on individual documents when you save them or you can change the default setting that the document is saved in; this can easily be reversed in the future.

For individual documents, instead of simply saving the document in the usual way, you need to:

~ With the document open, Select 'File', 'Save as'

~ In the Save Browser, have a look at the bottom and you will see 'Save as type:'

~ Use the little drop-down arrow to the right to show all of the document type options

~ Scroll until you find '.doc' for the MS Word documents and '*.xls' for your MS Excel documents

~ Then name your document, select a location to save it, and select 'Save' in the usual way.

To change the default setting so your documents automatically save in the older format is easily done and can easily be undone as well. As Microsoft has already gone to the trouble of creating instructions with pictures, go to www.vista4beginners.com/Office-2007-save-using-the-Office-97-2003-format for good instructions on this task.