Can’t Open Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel Documents Anymore with Office 2003? You’re Not Alone!

Excel 2003: When you double-click the file or you double-click the file as an attachment in e-mail, you get –

• ERROR MESSAGE: “Windows cannot open this file.”

How strange is it that Office can’t open Office documents?!?!?!  We just assume the sender or creator of the original document did something wrong and as them to re-send.  And again, it doesn’t work.  Why not?

VS.

Here’s probably why:  While you’re stuck in 2003, they’ve upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007.  Perhaps they bought a new PC or laptop.  Or they just bought the new Office 2007 package itself from BestBuy or somewhere else.  But basically, the default file format that Word 2007, Excel 2007, Powerpoint 2007 uses CANNOT be opened by any Office 2003 products.  Microsoft is now using something called Office Open XML file formats.  Office 2003 and earlier can’t read these natively.  You supposedly can do more with this new file format, but for now, it’s apparently limiting what YOU can do with it, right?

There are 3 options to fix this problem:

1) Get the original writer of the file to re-save it in a backward compatible Office 2003 format — which you’ll have to ask them to do every time, and ask everyone that has Office 2007 to do it each time you encounter someone new sending you documents.  What a pain in the neck, and more probably, you’ll be seen as the pain in the neck!

2) Upgrade to Office 2007 yourself and cause trouble for everyone else to whom you send documents.  Then jump to last sentence of Option #1 above.  Of course, if you’re stuck back in time with Office2002, 2000 or earlier, you proabably should just go the cheap route for now and get Office 2003 and go to #3 below!)

3) FIX Office 2003 so that it can magically read any files saved by Office 2007 applications.  This last option is really what you should do today before you even think about spending another $100 to upgrade to 2007.  Microsoft has a free downloadable patch that allows your Office 2003 programs to read and utilize Office 2007 files.  Luckily Microsoft has a page that details How To Use Earlier Verisions of Word, Excel & Powerpoint to Open and Save Files from 2007 Office Programs.

“By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats.”

DOWNLOAD THE FREE PATCH FROM MICROSOFT HERE