How to open Microsoft Office 2007-09 documents with earlier Microsoft Office versions

Someone sent you a word document that was created using Microsoft Office 2007-09 but you cannot open the file because you have an earlier Microsoft Office version. This can very very frustrating especially if the document needs to printed or edited right away.

Microsoft Office versions from 2007 to present uses the .docx extension by default, and earlier versions uses .doc extension. Though you have the option to save or open the document as .doc format, earlier versions cannot open .docx format.

But don't worry, here are solutions to your problem.

1. You can download and install the free Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. This will help you open, print edit, and save .docx files in Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003 (much like an advanced Word 2007 File Viewer).

If you are on Mac, you can get the Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac - this converts .docx to rtf (rich text format) files which can be viewed in Office for Mac and other Mac word processors.

It is also possible to open and edit a .docx file in OpenOffice or StarOffice using the free Open XML Translator from SourceForge which converts .docx Word documents to .odf and vice versa.

2. There are also free online tools that you can use. Unlike the Microsoft Compatibility Pack, these docx to doc conversion services do not require copy of Microsoft Office.

Some of these sites are:

Docx2Doc is a web service which offers free conversion of docx documents to doc format.
Zamzar is another service which offers document conversions. The advantage of Zamzar is its capability to convert not only office documents, but also images, music, archives and videos as well.
TDS Converter offers free conversion of docx to doc.

In fact, there are a lot of free online conversion tools available in the net. All you have to do is google your desired keyword for the file you wanted to convert.