How to Save Word 2007 Documents as Older Version

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By Krystyne20
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Save Word 2007 Documents as Older Version

It's easy to save Word 2007 documents to Word 2003 or earlier. The following guide will walk you through how to change your default settings so that Word 2007 documents are automatically saved as an earlier version (.doc) of Word.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

MS Word 2007

Step 1

Microsoft Office Button

Open Word 2007 and click the Microsoft Office Button located in the upper left-hand corner of the Word 2007 screen.
Step 2

Word Options Button

Click the Word Options button located in the bottom right corner.
Step 3

Save as Word 97-2003

To change the default Save As type of a Word 2007 document, click the Save button located in the panel on the left of the Word Options window. Where it says 'Save files in this format' choose 'Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)'. Click OK.
Step 4

Now when you save a Word 2007 document it will automatically be saved as a Word 2003 or earlier version document and will have a ".doc" extension instead of ".docx".
Step 5

See Tips and Resources below for more information, including a link to install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack.

Tips & Warnings

If you do not want this as a default setting, just choose Word 97-2003 in the File Type box when you go to save your document.
If you already have documents saved as Word 2007 documents (.docx), but you want to save it as .doc, open the document, do a "Save As" and change the file type to Word 97-2003.
In order for someone with an earlier version of Word to open an Word 2007 document (".docx"), they need to install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for 2007. This can be downloaded from the Microsoft.com website (see link below).
WARNING! By saving your documents to the earlier version of Word (.doc), there will be some features of Word 2007 that you will not be able to use with .doc document. So keep that in mind when making this change.

Resources