For the latest information, see Today Microsoft Office applications are used by more than 40 million people around the world, and over 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Office. Because the use of Microsoft Office is so widespread, it is important that individuals responsible for implementing and supporting Office 97 have well thought out strategies for upgrading. This document is designed to help administrators and support professionals understand the issues with sharing files between multiple versions of Microsoft Office. It describes the various migration tools built-in to Office 97, conversion utilities, work-arounds and support materials. (Please see links to related information at the end of this document).
On This Page Supporting multiple versions of Microsoft Office The file formats for Microsoft Office 97 have changed due to new functionality found in each application. For example, features such as Shared Workbooks in Microsoft Excel, Table Drawing in Word, and Custom Shows in PowerPoint required changes to the file formats. However, Microsoft understands that most companies cannot upgrade to Office 97 overnight.
For this reason, support and Helpdesk personnel may face issues with running multiple versions of Microsoft Office during the migration. In a mixed environment of Microsoft Office versions, users quickly become aware of the issues with sharing files. For example, Office 97 users may not want to give up the new features by saving documents into older formats. Similarly, Helpdesk administrators may not want to invest the time and resources necessary to install converters for the older versions. But ultimately, users of various versions of the software need to share files and work together to get their work done.
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So what can be done to solve this problem? Microsoft spent considerable time anticipating these issues and provides several solutions such as Default Save As, installable file converters, file viewers, dual file formats and batch file converters. Each of these options is described below. Default Save Users of Word, Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint can save their documents as previous version file formats or even in the formats of competitive products. To make this process even easier, Office 97 provides users with the new Default Save feature to automatically save files in a specified version. Through the Tools/Options Dialog box in each application, users can select a previous file format, say Microsoft Word 6.0/95, as the default format to save all files.
Another way to set the Default Save format is for administrators to use System Policies (shown in the illustration below) in Windows® 95 or Windows NT® Workstation 4.0 and the System Policy Templates included with the Microsoft Office 97 Resource Kit. With System Policies, the administrator can define settings on the end user desktop by changing a file on the server. In addition, these settings are implemented every time the user logs onto the network.
Therefore, if the end user makes a change to a setting, that change is automatically overwritten with the administrator's policy the next time the user logs on to the network. In addition, administrators can customize a message to display when users try to save files in a format other than the default. If necessary, this setting can be overridden for users of Office 97 that aren't sharing files with users of previous versions. Once all users have been upgraded to Office 97, administrators can use System Policies again to enable users to save in the native Office 97 file formats. Game Tenchu 3d 240x320.
For additional information, please see the Using System Policies to Administer Office 97 Whitepaper on System Policies Editor helps set the Default Save As file format in Word 97 If you cannot implement System Policies because they are not supported on your network or because you have a large number of Windows NT Workstation 3.51 users, there is another alternative. The Network Installation Wizard, which is used to customize Office 97 Setup, can be used to add Windows registry settings keys that will set the Default Save As file format at the end of Setup.
The benefit of this method is that it is part of Setup, so it doesn't require touching the desktop a second time, and it will work in any network infrastructure. The disadvantage of this method is that it is a one-time setting. If the user changes this setting, there is no automatic way of re-setting it to the organization standard. Network Installation Wizard helps set the Default Save As file formats Installable File Converters for Microsoft Office 97 Documents The second option for viewing an Office 97 file is to open that file directly in the previous application, using a file converter. For example, a Word 6.0 or 95 user can use an installable file converter to open a Word 97 document, but not save in the Word 97 format. Note that not all Word 97 features will be converted, as described later in this document.