It’s bound to happen sooner or later. Someone — co-counsel, client, whoever — sends you a document with a .docx extension. You try to open it in Word 2003 or even 2002, but you get an error message.
Don’t fret — it’s an easier problem to solve than you think.
Microsoft publishes what they call a “Compatibility Pack,” which is basically an add-on that enables you to access Office 2007 documents within prior versions of Microsoft Office (including Word).
The Office Compability Pack can be downloaded here.
Be sure you’ve gone through all high priority updates through Microsoft Update so that you have the most current release of your version of Word and Windows before installing the Compatibility Pack.
Once you have any other updates installed, you can install the Compatibility Pack. The file you download from the download site will be called FileFormatConverters.exe. (Depending on how your browser is set up, it may be sitting on your desktop.) Be sure you’ve exited out of Word, then double-click on that file to install the conversion program.
The Compatibility Pack can be used on the following versions of Word:
- Word 2000 (Service Pack 3)
- Word 2002 (Service Pack 3)
- Word 2003 (Service Pack 1 or greater)
- Word Viewer 2003
Once you have the compatibility pack installed, you can open and edit .docx files like you would any other Word file. Some 2007-specific features may be lost in translation, so be sure to communicate that to whomever you’re exchanging files with.
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