Reminder About Office Format Compatibility

As of October, 2008, all public and staff computers now have OpenOffice.org 3.0.

This means that you have the choice of opening, editing, and saving common Microsoft Office 2007 formats in either OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office 2007.

Both Office Suites support exporting documents to Adobe Acrobat PDF. You also have the option of exporting or converting documents in either Office Suite into any number of other formats. In Office 2007, in addition to PDF you can also export to XPS, and open and edit ODF (the open format used by open-source office suites).

For documents created on another computer with Microsoft Works 6-9, only Microsoft Office 2007 can open and edit these documents; however, you can convert them to a different format.

For opening and using Works Documents, it is recommended that the following procedure is followed (due to Works apparently not adding the file extension to a Works file when it is saved).

1. If the file is on a CD, copy it to the desktop first; otherwise, continue to Step 2.

2. Open the Microsoft Office application that corresponds to the type of document you want to open (Excel for spreadsheets, Powerpoint for presentations, and Word for word processing).

3. Click on the Office symbol (gold colored circle on the upper left-hand corner) and select "Open."

4. Make sure "Files of type" is set to "All Files"

5. Navigate to where your document is, select it, and click "Open." The file should then open.