How to Deal With DOCX, PPTX, or XLSX files

This document explains how to deal with files ending in “.docx”, “.pptx”, and/or “.xlsx”. This includes any obvious variation as well, such as “.DOCX” or “.DocX”.

Microsoft Office includes the programs Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

When designing Office 2007, Microsoft decided to cause these programs to create files that can not be opened with older version of Office. While it is possible to prevent this from happening, they will default to creating these incompatible file formats.

This can cause many problems. For example, if a student uses Word 2007 to write an essay and then sends the file to a teacher using Word 2003, that teacher will be completely unable to view the file.

While AppleWorks, Open Office, NeoOffice, AbiWord, and other programs were able to handle older version of Microsoft Office documents, they have not yet been updated to handle these new file types.

(Note: If you are looking for a free program to open and save Word, Excel, and/or PowerPoint files, Open Office for Windows and Linux and NeoOffice for Mac are highly recommended. These programs are free and well respected by the technical industry.)

At Cairo-Durham, we currently do not use Office 2007. As a result, any files created at home on Office 2007 may be unusable while at school.

There are several things that you can do to avoid these problems.

• Do not use Word 2007, Excel 2007, or PowerPoint 2007.
• If you use Office 2007, remember to use the Save As command to convert your files to something that older programs can use. The Save As command can be found by clicking on the giant Windows logo “bubble” in the top-left corner of the screen/window.
• Use OpenOffice on Windows or NeoOffice on a Mac when you are at home. If you do this, remember to use Save As to convert the files into pre-2007 versions of Word, Excel and/or PowerPoint. These programs are free downloads and are highly recommended by the technical industry.
• From a Mac, you could purchase iWork 2008 or newer. This can open these files. Note that you must use the “Export” command (in the File menu) to convert the files back into Word, Excel or PowerPoint files.