Stick to the Doc-Word 2007 Documents Backward Compatibility

Many people haven’t upgraded from Windows XP to Windows Vista yet and are still using the previous versions of Microsoft Office in which Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize the .DocX format. And those who have upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007 are loving it, even though they miss the thing that Microsoft Frontpage was.

I am using Microsoft Office 2007 myself because I really like the improved, user-friendly Word 2007. The new default format in which the documents are saved – .docX, files take up less than half the disk-space as the .doc files with the same content. Thus, for personal use I save all my word documents as .docX files. But when I am to send these files over IM or through email – I can’t be certain that the person on the receiving end also has Word 2007 on his system.

.docX files take less than half the diskspace as the .doc files with same content

In that case, I create a duplicate copy (Save As) of my .docX file in the .doc format and send this one out so that anyone with the previous versions of Microsoft Word might be able to use it. To save valuable disk space, I delete these doc files then, and keep the docX only.

Saving Documents as DOC or DOCX

Saving a Word Document as DOC or DOCX

Just a few days back, on the last day of our summer training, I remember how bad we (me and my friends) got screwed up as one of us who was preparing the project files to be printed had saved the soft copies as .docX files and when he went to the stationary store for getting the print outs (half an hour away from college) it turned out that the guy didn’t have Word 2007 and he had to travel back to college, save all files as .doc and get back to the store to get them printed !

Stick to the Doc!