July 14, 2007...5:05 pm
Quick Tip: Reading Office 2007 Docx Files
My Dad recently was puzzled by some documents he received in an email and that he couldn’t open. It turned out that they were created in the lastest Microsoft Office 2007 and were docx word files. As my Dad didn’t want to purchase Office 2007 (he has little need for it) I made some suggestions as to how he might be able to view them after I’d tested a number of alternatives. I thought it might be useful to share the info:
If you have an earlier version of office incl. 2000,xp, 2002 then you can download the Microsoft compatibility pack (Windows only).
Microsoft also have an Docx coverter for Mac that plugs into existing versions of office for Mac.
Update: A new Docx converter for Office 2004 and Office v.X is here (will not work with Office 200 
Or download and install OpenOffice (or NeoOffice for Mac) for free which can open the files (though in my experience not entirely accurately mostly due to missing fonts).
Use an on-line conversion service such as docx2doc (this does a very good job).
A little background
Microsoft have previously promised that their new file format will be open and details published so that other application makers will easily be able to allow their software to open and write to the format but as yet Microsoft have not released these details (even owners of Microsoft Office for Mac cannot as yet open these files).
1 Comment
September 13, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Thanks for posting this…I had some students send me ’strange’ files and your post helped me straighten things out.
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