Microsoft is offering a Compatibility Pack for users of Microsoft Office XP and 2003 for Word, Excel and PowerPoint that will allow you to open, edit and publish files in the new 2007 format (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&DisplayLang=en
There’s a notice in the article as well which makes me wonder if this might work with earlier versions of office as well: “If you use Microsoft Office Word 2000 or Microsoft Office Word XP to read or write documents [...]“. I don’t know if this is the case, however. Did anyone ever try this?
Anyway, the installation is currently not available in German but for the fun of it I tried installing it for a German Office 2003 anyway. The installation went through but so far I haven’t been able to open any documents irrespective of whether they were created with Beta 2 or Beta 2 Technical Refresh 2. I’m sure this will change as soon as an update in German becomes available.
HOWEVER, there has been a nice side effect concerning my Groove installation (note: I’m running the Office 2003 suite along with Office Groove 2007 TR 2). After installing the TR 2 update for Groove and triggering the Office 2003 installation for some other reason I don’t remember, whenever I’d open an explorer or Internet Explorer window, the office 2007 installer would start up. In the process, it would report the error ”Fehler 2711 – Interner Fehler (TCWord97FilesIntl_1031 )” (that’s “Error 2711 – Internal Error…”).
After installation of the Compatibility Pack, that error is now gone. Completely. The same goes for my colleague’s PC.
So, if you have the problem as well, why not give the Compatibility Pack a try? It might do the same for you!