Microsoft Office Compatibility

Vista at Haverford
MS Compatibility Pack for Windows

Change Office 2007's default file format to the Office 97 - 2003 format

If you often share your documents with others who do not have Office 2007, you may find it useful to set the Office 97 - 2003 as your default format. Although it is more compatible, the older format lacks some of the features in Office 2007 you may wish to use. You can disable this setting at any time, if you wish to return to standard default formats.

The instructions below are for Word, but similar options exist in Excel and PowerPoint.

1. From the round Office icon select the Word Option button.
   
2. A word options dialog box comes up. Select the Save option. Then, from the save files in this format drop down menu select Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc).
   
3. Click OK. From now on all your documents will be saved using Word's older ".doc" file format, unless you use the Save As option to save a file in a different format.