[MS Office - 2007] forcing Save as 97-2003 in Word 2007 corrupts tables

[joe90bass]

We've started deploying Office 2007, and to ensure compatibility with external users, pupils at home and those who are on Office XP I've set everything to save as earlier versions. From what I can tell forcing this in word is causing file corruptions, it appears that all the pupils who've had this problem have tables in their documents. Has anyone else come across this? or even better have a fix! I'm off to check my WSUS server for Office updates in the vain hope there's a fix available

[Michael]

How have you controlled the Office 2007 default save format? The recommended approach is using Ork Tools, but this shouldn't cause corruption. As a recommendation, the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack should be installed on machines with Office 2000/XP/2003.

[joe90bass]

I've set it through group policy using the supplied templates on the office 2007 CD.

It just that all the pupils I've had come to me with corrupt word files have all had tables in their dcouments, and we never had this problem before going to Office 2007........

[Michael]

I suspect it is something to do with using Office 2007, then going back to Office 2003 (for example), even though the format is .doc Have you installed the Compatibility Pack?

[joe90bass]

We don't have the compatibility pack installed on the PCs which are still running office XP. The plan is to get them over to 2007 ASAP. There's also still the issue of when the kids go home and use earlier versions.

Surely having it set to save as 97-2003 should avoid all of these issues not create them

[Pashers]

We have similar problems with office 2007, it doesn't come up too often. We set the default save as to 2003 (for those who don't have the office 2007 at home). All the computers use the office 2007 within the school. However, there's times when the pupil doesn't take it home and it still comes up saying the file is corrupted. Open office is able to get most of the work, but not in a 'tidy' fashion. Why on earth does Microsoft have to keep changing file formats? Why can't they just keep it the same. Lol that's why I personally go to open source at home e.g. Ubuntu. They don't change everything year.

[Michael]

I remember years ago that creating a document (especially tables) on Office 2003 and then opening the document on Office '97 or 2000, it didn't always display correctly. I suspect this is something very similar.

[joe90bass]

@pashers. Thanks for the info on Openoffice, I'll give that a try next time. I managed to get the text back fr one pupil today using the 'recover text option'

It is a big concern for me though that these issues exist.........

[Pashers]

I'm not sure if this helps. But I've just had a pupil come down with a table issue. They had two tables in word 2007, saved for a 2003 document. If you view it in 2003 it looks terrible, the two tables are on top of each other. Whereas, it looks ok in 2007.

I fixed this by right clicking the table and going to the table's properties. Changing the wrapping to None. This might fix some other issues!

[joe90bass]

I'm downloading OO now to see if that has more luck recovering the work as you suggested. A pupil has just come back after redoing a lot of the work last night only to have it corrupt again. This time she only had pictures in the document, no tables.

I've just used my last free support call with MS to sort hopefully sort out or group policy problems

[penfold]

I've just encountered this problem. Does anyone know why this happens? It just happened when I tried to open a document, but have been told that this has happened a few times before to other people. Luckily for us it was from a copied file, which was just overwritten and it was fine. But my question is what is causing it?

[rdk]

Why force Office to save in the old format? Teach the kids to save it in 97 - 2003 format if they need to, and download the compatibility pack and let them take it home on a USB drive if the don't know how to download it themselves. We went to Office 2007 at the start of 2008 and did what I described above - no complaints from any of our 800 kids.