Microsoft Office 2007 may include a bunch of nifty updates from previous versions of Microsoft's office suite. But it also includes new document formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. In other words, it causes a bunch of headaches when an Office 2007 user sends files to Office 2003 or OpenOffice.org users.
There are a
bunch of
services that will
convert the new .xlsx, .docx, and .pptx files to old fashioned .xls, .doc, and .ppt files. But Microsoft has a solution for anyone who just needs to read documents without editing them.
This summer Microsoft release a
compatibility update allowing Office 2003 and earlier customers to open the new file formats. It turns out that update also lets you use the free
Word Viewer 2003 to read .docx files. Now Microsoft has also released
PowerPoint Viewer 2007 with support for .pptx files.
There's no update to
Excel Viewer 2003 yet, but we're guessing it's just a matter of time.
[via
ActiveWin]