Real Estate Technology Coach

For those of you (and I know there are many) who are still using older versions of Microsoft Office (1997-2003), you should download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.

Many of you may have already experienced difficulties in sharing files between older versions of Office and the new version.  Until recently, Office 2007 users have had to save their documents twice, once for their use and once to send to you.

Why should you change this?

First, people are upgrading to Office 2007, so more and more people you encounter will be using this version.  Second, and most importantly, the file sizes are significantly smaller.  This is most beneficial for emailing documents, but when you start considering the 1,000 documents and spreadsheets on your computer, you could be freeing up a lot of hard drive space.

I created a basic Word document and saved it in both Office 2007 and 1997-2003 versions.  I also created an Excel spreadsheet with a couple of columns of data and a chart, again saved in both formats.  Here’s the size information:

Word 2007

Word 2003

Look at the Size on Disk difference, the old version is over twice the size of the new version.

Excel 2007

Excel 1997-2003

Again, the new version of Excel is half the size of the old version.

So save some bandwidth, save some storage, and save some headaches and download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack.

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