So You Need to Use Office 2007 Documents, but You Don't Have Office 2007

Problem Statement

You are using Microsoft Office 2003, XP, 2000, or 97, and you need to be able to open and edit documents generated by Microsoft Office 2007.

Solution

Install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats, available as a free download, from the Microsoft Download Center, at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en.

Cautions and Prerequisites

The following recommendations are the result of 20 years of experience using and supporting installations of practically every version of Microsoft Office and Windows that has ever been released. Regretfully, the first bullet is the result of a recent incident involving a client, who presented with a corrupted installation of Microsoft Office.

1. Working Installation of Microsoft Office. – You must have a working installation of any of the older versions of Microsoft Office. If your installation of Microsoft Office is out of sorts in any, however minor, that must be fixed first. Otherwise, installing the Compatibility Pack won’t improve matters, and may make things much worse. The simplest test, which is probably enough, is to make sure that you can open a document in each of the formats covered by the Compatibility Pack, which are as follows.
• Excel. In a detail view of Windows Explorer, these are listed as Microsoft Excel Worksheet.
• PowerPoint. In a detail view of Windows Explorer, these are listed as Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation.
• Word. In a detail view of Windows Explorer, these are listed as Microsoft Word Document.
2. Up to Date Installation of Office. – Ensure that your base installation of Microsoft Office is up to date, by visiting the Microsoft Update Web site, and installing all updates identified as being for Microsoft Office.
• If your installation includes programs from several versions of Office, you may be offered updates for the older versions. To be on the safe side, accept all of them.
• If you are offered updates for Windows, accept them, too, because Microsoft Office uses many Windows components, and a problem with one of them is also a problem with Office.
3. Reboot your computer. – Do this even if the setup program doesn’t request a restart.
4. Download and install the Compatibility Pack. – Please observe the order of these steps; it is well thought out, and based on 20 years of experience with Microsoft Windows.
5. Install Updates for the Compatibility Pack. – Since the Compatibility Pack package offered on the download page is the original “RTM” version, there are numerous updates, most of which fix critical security issues, it is essential that you install them Revisit the Microsoft Update Web site, and install any additional updates that are offered.
• Some of them will specify that they are for the Compatibility Pack, but others will specify that they are for Office 2007, itself, or one of its components.
• Even if the update says that it is for Office 2007 or one of its components, if it is offered to you, the update affects a component of Office 2007 that is also part of the Compatibility Pack.
6. Reboot your computer, again. – Do this even if the setup program doesn’t request a restart.

Additional Information

Following are a few additional tidbits, most of which are either undocumented, or sparsely documented.

1. The Compatibility Pack installation adds an item to your Add/Remove Programs list. However, the name shown in the list differs significantly from the name displayed on the download page.
• The name in Add/Remove Programs is Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office System.
• For comparison, the name shown on the download page is Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats.
• In contrast, your installation(s) of Microsoft Office are listed by such names as the following.
• Microsoft Office 2000 SR-1 Disk 2.
• Microsoft Office XP Professional with FrontPage.
• Since the Add/Remove Programs application allows only two views of the list (by name and by installation date), it is unlikely that the items for the 2007 compatibility pack will be anywhere near the items for your base installation of Microsoft Office.
2. Your installation may also include an item listed in Add/Remove Programs as Microsoft Office Converter Pack.
• This is a different converter pack, published by the Office Resource Kit Group.
• Unlike the 2007 converter pack, this update installs file converters and image filters (programs that enable you to embed the images in documents) for older and infrequently used file formats. If you exchange documents with outsiders, you may want this converter pack, too.
• Like the 2007 converter pack, this one works with Office 97 through Office 2003, and is available from this page in the Microsoft Download Center.

Formatting Windoes Explorer Detail Columns to Fit Contents

If you use Microsoft Excel, you may have discovered a shortcut that is undocumented, so far as I know, that allows you to auto-fit a single worksheet column to fit its contents by double-clicking on the divider between the column and its right hand neighbor.

Today, I discovered that, not too surprisingly, the same shortcut works in the Windows Explorer. Since I work in the Detail view most of the time, I am always adjusting the widths of one or another of its columns, depending on the information that is currently of most interest. Just for fun, I decided to test the double-click. Sure enough, the width adjusted, exactly as it would in Microsoft Excel!

In both cases, you must double-click on the border at the top of the window. In Excel, this is the part where you see the column labels, A, B. C ... etc.

Likewise, in the Windows Explorer, you must double-click on the area that contains its column labels, File, Size, Type, Date Modified, ... etc.

This new knowledge will save me lots of time!

To Copy A Directory Tree, Without Copying the Files

For the first time in a long while, I just needed to duplicate the structure of a directory tree, without copying the files.

The Problem

Duplicate the structure of the directories that hold my program source code, so that I can move the archives of completed projects out of the active development directories, which are backed up nightly to an offsite location, while keeping them organized as they currently are in the development directories.

The Solution

I began by starting a conventional copy, using the Windows Explorer. As it got underway, it occurred to me that there had to be a more efficient way. A quick Google search yielded instant results.

The search term was straightforward, "copy directory structure only."

The command that got the job done, in less than a minute, is equally straightforward, as shown in Listing 1, which I copied and pasted from my command prompt window.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

 

C:\Common_Data\WinZip_archives\code_libs>XCOPY "C:\Documents and Settings\David\
My Documents\Programming" /T /E

 

C:\Common_Data\WinZip_archives\code_libs>

 

Listing 1 - The command above, XCOPY "C:\Documents and Settings\David\My Documents\Programming" /T /E, leverages the sparsely documented T switch of the faithful XCOPY command, which has been a stalwart friend since at least 1989.

More Shortcuts

OK, so I cheated.

• I used a shell extension to open my command prompt window with the target directory already made current.
• I used the Windows Clipboard to get the name of the source directory right the first time.

This second shortcut is especially noteworthy, because it calls attention to another sparsely documented feature of Windows, which is that pretty much anything that you can highlight can be copied, using the CTRL-C keyboard shortcut.

Among other things, this means that you can copy from any of the following locations.

• The address bar of a Windows Explorer window.
• The file name text box of a file property sheet.
• Any other text box.
• Some other text on property sheets. Among others, I've had success with the following.
• File create, modify, and access dates on file property sheets.
• File sizes, also on file property sheets.
• Version strings, from the Version page of the property sheet for an EXE or DLL file.

If you need text from almost anywhere in a Microsoft Windows application, try to highlight it. If it's text on the flat surface of a dialog box, try dragging the mouse across it. If you can highlight it, a quick CTRL-C  puts it into the clipboard.

For Geeks Only - Why This Works

Although it isn't obvious, selectable text lives in a Text Box control. It isn't obvious that it's a control, because of the way its properties were set at design time.

• Border is set to None.
• Background is set to Transparent, or its color is set to be the same as that of the dialog box surface.
• 3D effects are off.

How these settings are applied depends on the development environment, but all can be set in any environment that lets you build custom dialog boxes and other types of forms. Among others, this includes VBA (hosted in Microsoft Access, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, among others), Visual Basic (classic versions 1 through 6), VB.NET, and C#. This also includes the WinBatch dialog editor, and probably numerous others.