BRAVO TECHNOLOGY CENTER

Office 2007 Compatibility Issue

 a Small Business IT Perspective

by Sam C. Chan
 

July 1, 2009

US Adoption Picture (as of mid 2009)

  Group/Sector Ratio Remarks
0 Consumers New Purchase 100% De facto choice, as installed, or as available at retail for purchase since end of 2006
1 Consumers Install Base 35% Still many legacy Office 2K/XP/2003 around, with new 2007 added
2 Very Sm Biz - Unmanaged 30% Operate like Consumers. Less incentive. More budgetary pressure due to scaling (qty). But unable to provide logistical solutions.
3 IT Managed Sm Biz 10% Fully able to move forward or hold back as optimal for operational concerns. Not-at-all dictated by vendor's schedule. Able to supply logistical know-how and tools to implement hybrid/legacy setup as needed. Favor simplicity and lower expenditure. Not interested in latest features.
4 IT Managed Med Biz 25% Operate like #3, but with larger budget, and more tech savvy, appreciate new features. Greater need for advanced features, due to organization complexity.
5 Large Corp 50% Major incentives: superior Outlook/Exchange features. In-house developed solutions based on Word/Excel/PP 2007 feature sets. Typically have pre-allocated funding, and on-going upgrade contract in-place. Cost is not a concern.

Timeline

  • Office 2007
    • released since end of 2006 (3 years ago)
  • Office 2003
    • discontinued since April 2007 (28 months of 2007-only sales).
    • Mainstream support ended 4/14/2009.
    • EOL 4/8/2014.
  • Office 2000
    • Mainstream support ended 6/30/2004
    • EOL 7/14/2009

Compatibility Status & Notes

  • All 4 versions: Office 97, 2000, XP(2002), 2003, use the same Office 97 file format. Only features and user interfaces are different.
  • Office 2007 uses the new format by default. Can be configured to default to old format, with reduction in functions.
  • The new format has been adopted by various government agencies world-wide as their official standard document format, as it is legally an open standard. The old format was proprietary.
  • New format is compressed and generally much smaller. Also supports encryption.
  • Even with compatibility mode configured, many documents would still end up saving in new format, for many reasons (too numerous to list).
  • Users of Office 2003 may download and install an free package to provide conversion capability.
    • NOTE: It is a converter feature add-on, not an upgrade.
    • It makes it possible to open the new format, but not support any of the new features
  • Of course, all newer versions are fully backward compatible, supporting older formats and features.
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