Office 2007 introduced new file format for documents. These documents cannot be opened or edited in older versions of Microsoft Office.

Microsoft has published a plugin that permits users of Office 2000 and Office 2003 to read these new file formats. Here is the link with the instructions and download.

Users of Microsoft Word 2007 can select "save as doc" when saving files to make them into Word 2003 compatible files, which will avoid problems for users who do not have the latest version of Word. Instructors and students are encouraged to post and attach files in this older "doc" format rather than the newer "docx" format.

Do not use Microsoft Works to prepare and submit class assignments. Most other users are not able to open and view Works files. A full-featured word processor such as Word or OpenOffice is required to do academic research and writing.

If you use WordPerfect or any other word processor, check the "save as" options to see if that program can save files in "doc" format.

Almost all word processors have a "save as RTF" option. RTF (Rich Text Format) files are readable in all word processors. If other compatibility attempts fail, saving as RTF almost always works.

If you can save Word files as PDFs (or print to PDF), this is the most reliable way to present documents since the author's page layout and font selection are preserved accurately in a PDF.