Office 2007 home and student

[lisalashes]

Hi, I've recently bought Office 2007 Student and Home, or Home and Student, (whatever) lol, and when I try to send a word document as an attachment in an email it doesn't look the same as the document I sent. It's causing me some problems as I am actually a student and need to email assignments to my assessor. I've tried saving it so that it's compatible with word 97-2003 but my tutor reckons it's just showing up as a load of gobbledy gook (I'm hoping she didn't just mean my work was rubbish).Is this normal? If so I've obviously bought the wrong version

:(

Any suggestions would be appreciated

[maynardvdm]

Hi

 

Welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help.

 

Microsoft Office 2007 use a new file format.

 

Have a look at this:

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats

[lisalashes]

Hi, Thanks. Had a look at that link but doesn't seem to have a download for vista

[RandyL]

Hi Lisa;

The download link on that page is for 2000, Server 2003, XP and Vista. The end recipient may need to install this.

[petef]

Hi, I've recently bought Office 2007 Student and Home, or Home and Student, (whatever) lol, and when I try to send a word document as an attachment in an email it doesn't look the same as the document I sent.

 

Try getting away from the MS proprietary formats (.doc, .docx) and use something designed to be more universal such as Rich Text Format (.rtf)

 

The Rich Text Format (often abbreviated RTF) is a free document file format developed by Microsoft in 1987 for cross-platform document interchange. Most word processors are able to read and write RTF documents.

 

Rich Text Format - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

Also, make sure you use standard FONTs that you know are supported

by most other Word Processors. (Courier, Arial, Time New Roman)

 

---pete---

[AdvancedSetup]

As Pete says - try to stay with basic Fonts. [Arial, Times New Roman]

Fonts supplied with Windows XP

 

You DO NOT need the compatibility pack for other users if you're saving in the 97-2003 format.

Though it could be a couple of reasons. Your e-mail could come out as a mail.DAT file on some mail

systems which would mean nothing to most systems. It is an ASCII text file but most systems don't

know what to do with it. If that is the case then no version you save as will work.

 

It could be the computer or Office version your Teacher is using is very old, or a Macintosh.

 

 

Saving as .RTF (Rich Text Format) is as Pete says, one of the best versions to save to since even

Wordpad should be able to open it properly. The downside is that it is quite large in size compared

to the .DOC format which is a compressed binary format.

 

Saving as XML will probably be a good thing in the future but right now there are still way too many

systems that would not be able to open it properly either.

 

You should attempt to attach your file (saved as a .RTF format) to an e-mail and then open that e-mail

from another computer and see if you can open it.

 

WD: Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification 1.7

 

There is also the PDF - Portable Document Format but there

are no good cheap editors that I'm aware of. There are many available but in my testing they are not

even close to the original Adobe Acrobat which is quite expensive - but your mileage may vary.

 

.

[RandyL]

Good points AdvancedSetup and petef as always but there might be more to it.

 

Ron as you know I don't have Microsoft Office anymore. I did however save an Open Office document in RTF and Wordpad would not open it properly.

 

I have had problems in the past with opening Microsoft documents between different versions of the same program such as Office and Works Word. To ensure both forward and backward compatability for all users I suggest that the conversion packs are the best option for everyone using Microsoft products. Especially with the introduction of Microsoft Office 2007. If anyone is still using pre Office 2007 they will surely need this in the future if documents are to be shared as you noted.

 

Even if the file is saved in a different version format the end user may still have to use the "OpenWith" function. With the advent of Vista this function is not always so easy to use as you maye have to "browse" for a compatable program as Vista will not always list it.

 

These conversion packs have worked well for me in the past. Since we don't know the nature of the Office file saving as RTF or txt might not be an option. If it is just a plain text file or one with Rich Text then simply putting the text into the body of the email might be the most assured method.

 

This is not a user issue in my opinion but rather a fault of Microsoft for not making their products truely and fully both forward and backwards compatable without the conversion packs. So I stand by maynards suggestion to have the end user install it.

 

Otherwise just put the text into the body of the email unless there is more then just text in the document.

 

RandyL

[AdvancedSetup]

Yes you're quite correct Randy.

 

The issue for Wordpad is that it basically is Word 6 for all intensive purposes but it does not have the full capabilities of it including the graphics filters. I have confirmed that items with images or complex data will not open properly with Wordpad either.

 

I'm not against the Compatibility Packs, just that you will find it quite impossible to even attempt to force someone to install anything just to read your document, most people will just delete it or ask you to send in some other format.

 

So it would appear that to be on the safe side one would have to actually use WORDPAD to create the document, though someone with an older version of Windows would still not be able to open it.

 

So, knowing your target audience would be the next best choice. In this case it seems that the Teacher has some version of either MS Office or OpenOffice or similar. To the best of my knowledge I think all of the versions of Office applications for the past couple of years do support opening MS Word 95 documents. If that is true then the attachment would seem to maybe be the issue - that's why I said he should try it out in advance himself to ensure that his e-mail was in the correct format and as an attachment.

 

As in your case or anyone without an Office Suite then one would have to use NOTEPAD to ensure portability. But I think we all understand that is not feasible.

 

Open Office is a FREE Office Suite that does support most of the current MS Office file formats (not the 2007 directly though) but it should open up .RTF files with images, etc...

 

Again, the target audience is what is important. ASCII is the only supported format for all platforms and versions of Office or No Office.

So if your audience has a plain Jane installation of Windows 95 with no other applications and you really have to send documents to them then you would almost have to use Notepad. Though for a more realistic target audience that has even MS Office 95 or Open Office 2.x - you should be able to send an MS Office 95 document and all of them "SHOULD" be able to open, read, edit, print out the document.

 

For the casual reader of this posting though, as Randy and Maynard have stated - it really is a good idea to install the Microsoft Compatibility Pack for MS Office if you do not have the latest version of MS Office installed. This will often allow you to read and print out newer MS Office versions that you may get from other friends or contacts in the mail.

[lisalashes]

Thanks for your suggestions. I've emailed my tutor to let her know about the download...hopefully that will sort it out. Why does it all have to be so complicated :rolleyes:

[petef]

ASCII is the only supported format for all platforms and versions of Office or No Office.

 

Years ago I learned my lesson and got away from using any special file

formats for most of my documents created in MS WORD that I maintain

for information only. This includes info I capture from websites, forums,

or things I write for myself. I save in "MS-DOS Text" format which is

readable by any word processor and creates very small files. I prefer to

use WORD becasue of the built-in spell checker and various other features

that are useful even for creating plain text files.

 

About the only time I use formatted text and save as MS word *.doc

is when I need to write a formal letter or a document that needs special

formating but most times I am printing a hard copy so compatibility issues

are never a problem.

 

To address lisalashes comment about "Why does it have to be so

complicated?", I say keep it simple as possible by only using plain

text with no special formatting and save as MS-DOS Text or ASCII

text for documents you intend to share with others or that are

for your own information only.

 

Only use fancy or special formatted text and MS proprietary file formats

for documents that you plan to print out and distribute or where you

know in advance that the people you intend to share with are using

the same MS Word program as you are.

 

I have lived by those rules for many years and the result is my archive

of over 3,600 files, mostly saved using MS Word in MS-DOS Text format

which is readable by any word processor. Can you imagine if I had saved

all those files using the various MS proprietary file formats since about

1995 and the monumental task of converting them to the new file

formats whenever MS decides to change things?

 

---pete---

Edited May 21, 2008 by petef

[RandyL]

Text is best right pete.

 

Imagine my horror when I couldn't open my Office files after getting Vista. My version of Office won't work on Vista. I'm not making that mistake again. Thankfully in my case Open Office saved me this time. Some but not all would open with Word Pad or Works.

[petef]

Imagine my horror when I couldn't open my Office files after getting Vista. My version of Office won't work on Vista. I'm not making that mistake again. Thankfully in my case Open Office saved me this time. Some but not all would open with Word Pad or Works.

 

Which Office version are you referring to that won't work in Vista?

 

It's exactly this kind of thing where MS breaks their own products

and leaves you stranded that has caused me to abandon MS products

and turn to alternatives. Over the years I've been burned too many

times by MS compatibiity issues within their own products where they

offer no easy and economical solution. I now avoid MS products

whenever possible.

 

---pete---

[AdvancedSetup]

I now avoid MS products

whenever possible.

 

---pete---

 

As a home user or very small business user that's probably quite easy to do, but for a larger business that is often just not feasible in today's software market. Some try hard to reduce their dependency on MS products but few seem to be able to completely get away from some of them.

 

It also really depends on your users and what features they use. For advanced power users there really is no other choice out there that comes close to the power of MS Office. Even with the new 2007 there are some users that should probably be using Access DB but are almost exceeding the limits of Excel because it is so much easier to slice and dice data and graphs with Excel than with Access. I now see files in excess of 30MB for an Excel file that used to be well under 1MB a few years ago.

 

Sorry to go off topic a bit lisalashes - but as you can see things just are not always easy with Computers for various reasons.

[RandyL]

Office 2000 Pro. It had major compatability issues with Vista. I could work around some but not nearly all.