Saving Office 2007 Docs as Earlier Versions

If you've upgraded to Office 2007, or are planning to, you may run into a situation where you send someone a file he can't open because he has an earlier version of the program. Fortunately, it's very easy to save documents in an earlier format, so your friends and colleagues can open and work on your docs without a problem.

The screenshots I'm using come from Word 2007, but the basic steps are the same for Excel and PowerPoint.

If you've already run into this situation, you've probably figured out that, when you go to the File > Save As menu, you have the option to change the file format to Word 97-2003 from the "Save as type" dropdown box.

However, if you have to do that every time you save a new file, it's very easy to forget to change it or to accidentally choose a different file type like "Word Template," which may make it harder for you to find the file at a later time.

Luckily, you can set the earlier version as your default "Save As" type. I recommend this for pretty much everyone, because people with Office 2007 will be able to open documents from previous versions as well, so you won't be leaving anybody out (unless, of course, they have an earlier version than Office 97, in which case, they probably have bigger problems...).

To set the default, click the Office button (the round one at the top left of the window) and then click Word Options at the bottom right.

Next, from the Save screen, select "Word 97-2003 Document" from the "Save files in this format:" dropdown.

Click OK, and the new default is set. From now on, when you go to save your Office document, it will automatically save to the older version. Of course, you'll always have the chance to save it as a 2007 document if you need to take advantage of one of the features that only works in that version (just don't ask me what those are!).

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Updates

A writing colleague of mine, Wendy Lyons Sunshine, shared this link to Shaon's Weblog, where you'll find information on how to convert Office 2007 documents if you happen to be the one with the earlier version and can't ask the person who sent it to re-save it. (Although, if you do have a good relationship with the person, I would suggest telling them about this option, because there's a good chance they'll have problems sharing files with other people as well.)

Thanks for the tip Wendy!

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