Ever have somebody email you a Word or Excel document created in Microsoft Office 2007 and you can't open it? That's because Microsoft changed the naming convention on their documents (don't you love improvements?!).
The problem is that previous versions of Microsoft Office used the standard naming convention (Word documents ended in the file extension ".doc", Excel documents ended with the ".xls" file extension, etc. However, Microsoft Office 2007 added an "x" to the end of the file extensions. Thus, Word documents became ".docx" docs, and Excel became ".xlsx" documents, etc.
The good news is that Microsoft has fix for the incompatibly issues. You can download and install a free compatibility pack that will allow you to open Microsoft Office 2007 documents. To get the free Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, click here.
If you're using an earlier version of Microsoft Office (2003, 2000, etc.), I recommend downloading and insdtalling the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack whether you think you need it or not. This way, you'll be able to open Office 2007 documents should the need arise.
