Are Microsoft Word 2003 and Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 compatible?

Question

If I install Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 on my computer, will the documents that are created and sent as attachments to an email be able to be opened by someone that has Microsoft Word 2003 installed on their computer?

Answer 1

There are two ways to go...

On the computer with Word 2003, install the Office Compatibility Pack from Microsoft.  If's free and lets you read all the new formats in Office 2007.  A good idea to have it.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai...

Alternatively, on the computer with Word 2007, when you create a file, don't save it as the default file type.  That would be .docx

Instead, save it as a Word 97-2003 .doc format.

Answer 2

They're compatible to the extent that the documents can be read and edited by the other version (after the addition of a free Microsoft Compatibility Pack on the machine with 2003), but new features in 2007 will not work in -- and may not be propagated by -- 2003.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

Not unless you save them as a Word 2003 document. You can do this in the "Save As" section.

If the extension on the documents is ".docx" then they won't be viewable by anything other than 2007. If it is just ".doc", you are fine.