Configure Office 2007 to save files in older format by default
Posted on August 24, 2008 at 5:35 am
Can’t open an Office 2007 file in Office XP or Office 2003? Or do you have Office 2007, but always have to save files in the older format in order to share them with others? There are two ways to solve this problem.
Either everyone who has the older versions of Office install the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack or the person with Office 2007 saves all files in the older 2003/XP format.
In this article, I am going to go through the steps to show you how to change Office 2007 so that all files are saved in the older format by default instead of the new XML format.
Save all files in in Word 97-2003 Format
First open any Office 2007 application and click on the Office button at the top left . Click on the Word Options button at the very bottom (Excel Options for Excel 2007, etc).
In the left-hand menu, click on the Save menu item and look under the “Save documents” section to change the default file format for saving files.
Now go ahead and choose your preferred file format, probably Word 97-2003 Document.
Click OK and now whenever you create a new file in Word 2007 and save it, it will be saved in the older format that you specified. You can easily change it back to the XML format when the older format is no longer needed.
If you want to save files in the new format most of the time, but only save in the older format on occasion, you can just pick that from the Save As menu option.
» Filed Under MS Office Tips
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The tip on how to “Save all files in in Word 97-2003 Format” does not work for me. Although the setting for “Save files in this format” remains set to “Word 97-2003 (.doc), new Word files continue to be generated with a .docx extension. Editing the file extension on Word 2003 machine and the file opens displaying gibberish. What did I miss?