How To Open .docx in Office XP And 2001

While the recession drags on, many not-for-profit organisations and charities can’t afford to update their PC’s or software.

While this is the ‘green’ thing to do and stops working computers from going into landfill, it can mean you need to upgrade on some levels to keep up with technology.

Many SCIP clients have told us they have trouble opening a document with a .docx suffix if they have an older version of Word when it is sent as an attachment. Office XP or Office 2001 for example, does not support .docx formats. Other people may not use Microsoft products at all and may find it difficult when such documents are sent to them.

Newer versions of Office such as 2007 and 2010 automatically saves the document as a .docx but the older versions of Office open & save documents as ‘document_name.doc’.

The best way around this difficulty is to use a converter to open docx documents called the  ‘Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats.

Technical director SCIP Andy Fairhall says:

” This converter is free from Microsoft. There is no need to download it from other websites.

If you’re having problems with your docs and your .docx, download the convertor and you’ll find life get much easier.”

Here’s an article with more information from the GHacks.net website, a site full of geeky, techy information. Don’t panic though,  this article is not too complicated. If you’ve got any other questions, do give us a call at SCIP, we’ll be happy to help.