Microsoft Office Resources

All College owned computers on campus, both Windows and Machintosh have Microsoft Office suites.  The suites include:

     -Excel

     -Word

     -PowerPoint

     -Access

     -Publisher

These are all capabile of opening Office files from previous version of Microsoft Office, as well as those created on any campus computer. 

Office 2007

The new Office 2007 has many different features from the older versions.  Some of these include a retooling of the menu bar, and a new type of file extention. 

For those of you who do not know what a file extention is, it is a bit of information that tells the computer what program to use to open up file, like a .doc is a word document, a .ppt is a powerpoint presentation and so on. 

So Why do I need to care about file extensions?

If you bought the new version of office the default file format has been changed to either a .docx (), a .docm (), and many others, a complete list is found below.  These file extentions ARE NOT compatible with older versions of Microsft Office unless a compatibility pack is added to the computer.  All of the PC labs have these compatibility packs added, but professors computers may not so check with them ahead of time if you use Office 2007 and wish to send them a file. 

Office 2007 Compatibility and the Mac

Microsoft has not and will not create a converter for their previous versions of Office for the Mac.  Students need to be aware of this when sending files to faculty with Macs or when planning to work on Mac labs and plan accordingly.

Solutions:

To prevent problems with compatibility on older PC systems and on Mac ITS recomends saving files in the older formats, i.e. .DOC, .EXL, .PPT, and so on.  If students have an older PC version of Microsoft Office and wish to utilize the new formats, a converter can be found from Microsoft here.   If you are having problems or questions please call a Student Assistant at x327.

The formats for Office 2007 are as follows, and the highlighted ones are backward compatible to Office 2000 with use of a conversion pack.

Word:

• Word Document (.docx) - Default format
• Word Macro-enabled Document (.docm)
• Word Template (.dotx)
• Word Macro-enabled Document Template (.dotm)

Excel:

• Excel Workbook (.xlsx) - Default format
• Excel Macro-enabled Workbook (.xlsm)
• Excel Template (.xltx)
• Excel Macro-enabled Workbook Template (.xltm)
• Excel Binary Workbook (.xlsb)
• Excel Add-in (.xlam)

PowerPoint:

• PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx) - Default format
• PowerPoint Macro-enabled Presentation (.pptm)
• PowerPoint Slide Show (.ppsx)
• PowerPoint Macro-enabled Slide Show (.ppsx)
• PowerPoint Template (.potx)
• PowerPoint Macro-enabled Presentation Template (.potm)
• PowerPoint Add-in (.ppam)