Microsoft's converter for previous Office versions

Microsoft has (finally) put out a converter tool for use in Office 2000, 2002 (Office XP) and 2003 to use the new OOXML document formats. This means you can open and edit documents from Office 2007 in previous versions of Office. This "compatibility pack" works for PowerPoint, Excel, and Word documents which is a godsend for anyone who is currently (or planning to) straddle the Office 2007 fence. You could say that this little app serves as the link from the new world to the old world, or the link between crazy, early-adopter, beta-testers to those less inclined to purposefully install "guaranteed-to-crash" software for the blissful fun of it. I know a lot of us have been looking for something like this, because colleagues, friends, and let's not forget our other machines have older versions of Office. So, there you go, served up nice and fresh for you at Microsoft digital headquarters. The converter is around 27MB to download, is free (one would hope it would be), and for once doesn't require you to sign away your new hummer and give a quart of blood and a urine sample just to get it. Click the version for your language and it will begin downloading. Let me know how the converter works out for you, since I have the 2007 beta installed, so I am converter-disabled at the moment. Note that you must have at least Office 2000 SP3, Office XP SP3, or Office 2003 SP1 and Windows 2000 SP 4, Windows XP SP 1, or Windows Server 2003.

Tags: document, excel, format, Microsoft, news, Office Open XML, OfficeOpenXml, OOXML, powerpoint, word