Backward/Forward Compatibility

For anyone who uses Microsoft Office regularly to share information with other staff or students (both on PCs and Macs) you may have started to notice difficulties since Office 2007 came out. With the new Office release comes new standard file formats that are not backwards-compatible with older versions.

In Word .doc has become .docx, in Excel .xls has become .xlsx, etc., and this has caused quite a few difficulties. In reality these changes are a step forward for Microsoft as these document formats are becoming the standard for these types of documents and are readable by more programs that are not specific to Microsoft.

Fellow staff Kendall passed on a message from Todd Johnson to make me aware of a patch that is available for those of you who have older versions of Office so that you can open, read and edit these newer formats. I poked around on the Microsoft site a bit and came across it here (unfortunately the problem is for both Macs and PCs, but the solution is Windows only):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466

Follow the instructions on the page to get it for yourself, make sure you read the system requirements (basically if you have an older version of MS Office or even just PowerPoint viewer it will work).

Note to Mac Users: I did look for a similar update for the Mac versions of MS Office, I couldn’t find anything. If any of you know where this would be comment below and I will make sure I update you all on it.

Saving as a PDF from Office 2007

If you’re one of the up-to-date few that already have Office 2007 running on your machine there is now another (and better) option for getting your files into PDF format. Dave commented on the last PDF post and shared the link there. It is also an update from Microsoft itself:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4d951911-3e7e-4ae6-b059-a2e79ed87041

This update is only for Microsoft Office 2007, it will not work with older versions or with other programs. If you still want to be able to “print to PDF” from other programs besides MS Office (or if you are running and older version) head back to the post on PDF-ing your documents and download CutePDF from there.

We’re all familiar with PDFs, those documents that you get that you can always read but you can never edit. They have been pretty standard for a number of years now (they’ve existed since 1993), but they’re on the brink of becoming the standard for documents on the internet (there are actual standards for content on the Web).

They are convenient because you don’t have to worry about whether or not your friend has Word, Publisher or whatever other program you’ve created your document in – they can still read it. It’s also great for sending out prayer letters by email so that you’re sure that all of your supporters can read it – I mean the program to read them is even free!

For a long time I was confused about how many people seemed to be able to create PDFs yet I was completely not able to make them… then I found out how.

Now, from what I understand, the ability to save a document to a PDF is native to OS X so those of you who are Mac users have this pretty easy. We’re going to walk through how to install a PDF Converter as a printer on your system. The program that I use is CutePDF.

CutePDF allows you to create a PDF document in any program that you can print from. When I need to print off a Bible study to send to a student – “print” it as a PDF and email it. When I have a receipt online that I want to save – “print” it as PDF and save it on my hard drive. When I want to save a webpage complete with all of the content as a single file – “print” it as a PDF and I can open it quickly whenever I want.

First, go ahead and download it from here (Windows required), you’ll also need to download a converter called Ghostscript that is also linked on the page (you can get it here). On the CutePDF page they’ll look like this image to the left.

Now all you have to do is run the CuteWriter.exe and converter.exe files that you’ve just downloaded and you’ll have CutePDF installed in your options whenever you want to print something. When you “print” with it, it will give you an opportunity to save it as a PDF where ever you want.

Now you can create PDFs!