Office formats?

[Felix]

Hi there,

someone claimed that office 97 and office XP have different document formats. Between Office 97 and Office 2000 would have been a change, while Office 2000 and XP stay the same.

I feel this is not correct. However the opinion occurred because when documents arrive by email from our customers, which use Office XP, some of our staff can't open it.

Where can I find further information?

TIA
Felix

[Felix]

In the meantime I've found the "Office 97 to Microsoft Office XP Migration Issues" page
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/journ/Xpdelta.htm

which has a link to a doc file which has an extensive list.
However that list does specify only for Word that the file versions are compatible. For the other office apps it gives no information.

Does anyone know any further?

TIA
Felix

[Nuclear Krusader]

I have had problems with opening in Word 97 documents made in Word 2000. Some format features are missing. But other than that I have had no probs.

I have never tried to open with Word 97 a document made in Word XP though.

I'll try tomorrow to open a doc made in XP with my Word 2000 and I'll tell you if I was able to do it or not.

[Tuf]

You can almost always open a documented created with an older version of any M$ Office with it's newer version. It's trickier the other way around. But the creator can chose to save as the version you are using.

Really for simple documents it's not much of a problem with Office 97 on. It's really complicated docs or ones that make extensive use of html that can give you fits.

[Nuclear Krusader]

HTML and the tables features included in the newer versions and not available in the older ones.