It seems that “NEW & IMPROVED” is shouted from the mountain tops of every product marketing campaign these days.

Microsoft product marketing is no exception. Every couple of years, we are coerced into upgrading to the “latest and greatest” bloatware.

This time around, it has been the old stand-by, Microsoft Office. On the PC, we are moving to Microsoft Office 2007. Whether it’s the pared down Home and Student Office version or the Office 2007 Ultimate Suite with a whopping 10 applications included, everyone is basically upgrading now or later. On the Mac side it’s a fresh “Mac Office 2008“.

These new versions bring with it all kinds of bells and whistles. A by product of this is that there’s a brand new file format in town. Instead of the .doc file format for Word docs, or .ppt for Powerpoint files, etc, now we have the “new and improved version” with an “X” at the end. Thus the new Microsoft Word files now get saved in .docx format. Powerpoint 2007 files are saved as .pptx.

If you have an older version of Microsoft Word, you can still open and edit the newer file formats, although you might loose some of the new functionality.  BUT, you have to download and install a free patch to make your older version of Office compatible with the new file formats — there’s one for both Mac and PC.

But of course, Microsoft isn’t all that benevolent.  They want everyone to upgrade at some point of course (cha ching cha ching, pay Bill more money for basically the same product!).  So NOT ALL older versions of Microsoft Office are allowed to use this patch to allow compatibility.

What’s the alternative to giving in and sending more cashola to Bill Gates & Co if you have an older version of Microsoft Office that cannot take the upgrade patch??

Here’s an interim solution that will do the trick and avoid the upgrade if everything else seems to be working just fine. Afterall, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right. . . Read the rest of this entry »