Compatibility

[Jeffju]

My partner needs to do a Powerpoint presentation soon. She will be preparing it on the Vista 2007 version of Microsoft Office. If she then transfers this onto a memory stick, will the presentation be able to be shown through Office Professional XP on a different computer?

[VHG]

Possibly not.

Make sure the person with Office XP has the Office Compatibility Pack installed.

This makes Office XP recognize the "new" Office 2007 formats.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.asp x?********=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd146 6&displaylang=en

[VHG]

I have not used Office 2007 much, but I believe you can save Office 2007 files in the "old" XP format.

Within the Powerpoint presentation select "save as" and see if you get the chance to save it in Office XP format.

Another option is to make the Powerpoint presentation a "stand alone" file so you dont even need Powerpoint on the PC to run it.

Never done it myself, but read this and see if it helps

http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/le arn/share/ppt2007toexe.html

[VHG]

My first "link" has been censored by answerbank because it contains part of a rude word.

Try again

http://tinyurl.com/ykums3

[Jeffju]

Ok! thanks for your help. All looks so complicated!

[VHG]

>All looks so complicated!

Let me try to simplify it.

In Office, before 2007, if you saved a powerpoint presentation it saved it with an "extension" of PPT, so for example the name may be Salespitch.ppt

In Office 2007 Microsoft decided to change the format of ALL their files, so in Office 2007 when you save a Powerpoint presentation it saves it with an extension of PPTX, so Salespitch.pptx

The problem is that Office XP has no idea what a PPTX file is, so it wont work.

So you have 2 choices:

1) Save the presentation as a "PPT" file (Office XP format)

2) Get the other person to install the compatibility pack on Office XP so it DOES know what a PPTX file is.

That is about as simple as I can explain it.

[Jeffju]

Very helpful for someone who isn't IT minded, thank you.