Office 2013 Compatibility

[Mario Davis]

MicrosoftOffice Compatibility Pack makes files created with Office 2007 and later work seamlessly on earlier versions of Office. If you're using an unpatched version of Office, this download will fix it. However, before you install this pack, make sure to download and install all of the latest updates from Microsoft.

If you're still using Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, then this patch will help you easily open, edit, and save files created with newer versions of Office. It's a surprisingly big download -- checking in at 37MB. That means you should set aside some time to download it if you're on a slow connection. Once you install this pack, you don't have to do much to make it work. It automatically repairs the issue. It also adds support to the Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to open DOCX, XSLX, and PPTX files.

While it's surprising that Microsoft Office Compatibility pack is as big as it is, it's not loaded down with unnecessary extras, and it solves compatibility issues with older versions with little effort on your part.

My experience is that using files on both MS Office and LibreOffice is at least as compatible between using MS Office files on different versions of MS Office! For simple documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, the compatibility is quite high with MSO and LibO, in fact. The more complex the file, then the higher chance of getting some glitches. This is inevitable.

Impress: If I want to use an Impress presentation with Powerpoint (or vice versa), I always use PPT format rather than PPTX, and keep the transitions/animations very simple. Long ago, you could get some surprises in how backgrounds are handled, but this is less frequent now.

On the whole, as long as you keep your expectations in check, and avoid over-complication of documents, then sharing files between the two Office suites is fairly successful, and very convenient. YMMV.

formats change, eg Microsoft modifies or introduces or updates a file format with their next version, or the other way around. Microsoft has historically had some bad practices in not adhering to file standards and add/remove certains bits of information which other applications cannot see.

Pessimistic thought suggests that Microsoft did this (or does this) because they were either carless/incompetent or nefarious. Nefarious by saving files in slightly non-standard format even though it is supposed to adhere to a standard, so they do not lose customers to other projects by having other suites not open these standard files correctly).

Many of these extension are implemented to get a better interoperability with MS Office. Therefore you might get better results working in docx, xslx and pptx. But that depends on what the documents actually contain.

In switching between MS Office and LibreOffice you have to keep in mind, that there are principle differences between the file formats, that prevent a direct converting and need workarounds: E.g. Word has tables, which can float, so that text can be on the side of the table. That is not possible in LibreOffice. Therefore on import the table is put into a frame. But a frame cannot split about several pages. Or another example: LibreOffice Writer has the ability to vary the vertical position of an image anchored as character, that is not possible in Word. There are a lot of such subtle differences, that you always need to examine the converting result to be sure, that it meets your demands.

In Office, compatibility mode is used automatically to open Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents that were created in earlier versions of these applications. Compatibility mode ensures that no new or improved features in Office are available while users work with a document so that people who use earlier versions of Office will have full editing capabilities. Compatibility mode also preserves the layout of the document.

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint use compatibility mode to open binary Office documents that were created in Office 2003 or earlier versions of Office. Word also uses compatibility mode to open OpenXML documents that were created in Word 2007 and Word 2010.

If you use Group Policy, you can use the Set default compatibility mode on file creation policy setting to manage the default compatibility mode that Word uses to create new Word documents. This might be necessary if you have add-ins or macros that use the layout functions that are used in Word 2007 or Word 2010. When you enable this policy setting, you can specify which versions of Word that new Word documents are compatible with. Several configurations options are available for this setting:

When you choose the Word 2003 option, Word is configured to create new Open XML files that have Word 2007 and later features disabled. Doing so makes sure that the Open XML files do not contain content that Word 2003 users can't edit. However, users of Office 2003 must still have the Compatibility Pack installed before they can edit Word Open XML files that are compatible with Word 2003.

You can download the Group Policy Administrative Templates files (ADMX/ADML) for Office from the Microsoft Download Center. The Set default compatibility mode on file creation policy setting is located under User Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Word 2016\Word Options\Save.

I have Office XP (2002) installed on my netbook, which is dual boot Windows XP SP3 and Windows 8.1.

It's installed on both operating systems sharing the same Program Files subfolder.

I have the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack installed as well, which is installed in different folders on the two operating systems.

Now updates for this have ended, I am now wondering what the final updates for it were.

The reason I ask is because for quite a while before EOS I was getting updates for the compatibility pack through Microsoft Update on Windows XP, but not on Windows 8.1.

This has resulted in the Windows 8.1 installation being out of date relative to the Windows XP installation.

Does anyone know what the last update files were for the compatibility pack, for all of its files?

If I can find that information I can (hopefully!) download the updates from the Microsoft Update Catalogue and install them on Windows 8.1 to bring it up to date.

Thanks, Dave.

I do use the compatibility pack on XP to open docx. All this itteration bullcrap will one day be looked back upon by future generations and viewed as pretty dumb and unecessary. The only reason for software updates is mortages and hungry mouths. period.

Wow, thank you so much @actinium, and sorry for the delay in my acknowledgement, I didn't get any e-mail notification of your post!

So, those 13 cab files are the latest (and last) versions of all the 2007 Compatibility Pack updates, and the exe files in OneDrive_2019-05-19.zip are the same thing just in a different format?

I already have the KB2526297 SP3 installation file.

Do I need the file format converters file, which is the other one that says it's missing from the zip file, due to having been too large?

Those 13 updates are the latest and last versions of all the 2007 Compatibility Pack updates.

The 13 .exe files and the 13 .cab files are the same updates just in a different format.

For what it's worth, I had OFfice 2003 installed for years and kept on top of the compatibility pack updates... One day, one of the updates broke Office and I said to heck with it and moved on to 2010 with a classic menu add-on.

I would like to use this opportunity to say that only the very first version (no SP) of the compatibility pack is compatible with Windows 2000 (vanilla; haven't tried later ones with the extended kernel). This version is no longer available from Microsoft though.

Reading through forums it appears that the different versions of the compatibility pack, not all were compatible with Windows 2000 (versions 3 & 4 are not). There are also Service Packs for the Compatibility Pack. With these Windows 2000 clients, it seems i need the Compatibility Pack version 2, then to install the Service Packs, yet i'm unable to find a link for version 2 of it.

And no matter what you try (ie reinstalling, repairing office & installing newest version) you cannot get rid of it then uninstall it, before running this install for Windows Installer 3.1 (if not already installed) -

This page shows supported versions of Report Generation Toolkit with Microsoft Office and LabVIEW development systems. Reference this information to ensure you install the correct toolkit version when upgrading or updating your system or software. Using incompatible versions may result in errors, or missing LabVIEW palettes or functions.

Starting in 2014, the LabVIEW Report Generation Toolkit is included with LabVIEW Professional. While it was previously additionally offered as an add-on product, you can only purchase this product as part of LabVIEW Professional. For information about LabVIEW and Windows compatibility, refer to LabVIEW and Microsoft Windows Compatibility.

Note: The table above shows compatibility for 32-bit version of the Report Generation Toolkit with LabVIEW and Microsoft Office products. Although compatibility for 32-bit and 64-bit are largely the same for this toolkit, some differences exist. Check the readme for your version under System Requirements >> 64-bit Version for specifics on OS and Microsoft Office Compatibility.

Click-to-Run is supported when the installation is carried out locally. Prior version of NPrinting do not support Click-To-Run.

The click-to-run version Microsoft Office 365 is not supported in Nprinting Designer for creating reports. You MUST install a local/standalone copy of a supported version of MS Office or install supported versions of MS Office locally.

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