Convert and Open MS Office 2007 in Older Version

Along with MS Office 2007 launch in January 2007, Microsoft introduced several xml-based format for their MS Office document. Two of the most popular MS Office document format is DOCX and DOTX. DOCX is a regular extension of MS Word document replacing DOC format. XML-based formats came with MS Office 2007 is completely different with older Office formats such as DOC, XLS etc. So if you make a document in DOCX or DOTX format with Office 2007, you cannot open or edit it in older MS Office version.

To make your older MS Office is able for opening and editing MS Office 2007 document, you need download and install Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats (27.5mb). After install, any Office 2007 documents opened with older Office version will be converted into older Office format.

File extension DOTX is a template file format for MS Word 2007. With a template, you can set default format for your future documents such as font style, page setup, line spacing, etc. There is always at least one file extension DOTX included in MS Word 2007 installation. While you may create additional template for all your needs.

In a case you got document with file extension DOTX or DOCX from others, sometimes you may get error due to bug on MS Office 2007 that run on Vista, you can convert the files into RTF. Docx2Rtf is a tiny software that able to convert docx, dotx, sxw, and odf to rtf (Rich Text Format). RTF is a format that could be opened by most text editing application. Or, you can download OpenOffice to open file extension DOTX or other MS Office 2007 format.