Office compatibilty

What ho one and all,

I am a member of a local committee that is currently creating quite a lot of paperwork. The chairman, who is doing most of the work creates documents on a new(ish) version of Word and sends a *.docx file.

I have Office 2000 (it does all that I need and more so see no reason to upgrade) and have the relevant MS file conversion software installed. Having converted the docx file, the formatting is wacky. Most of the text is fine but tables, bullets points and photos can be all over the place. If he sends as a pdf, of course, the formatting is fine but I cannot edit or make amendments.

Apart from upgrading my Office (an necessary expense,) what else can I do/

Toddle pip and thanks

Rex

Have the chairman save the file in the Word 97 to 2003 DOC format.

Have you considered dropping MS Office? I stopped using MS Office last year. Got sick of paying money to just open a few things here and there. MS Office compatibility being at the top of my list, I searched for some reliable free alternatives and settled on LibreOffice https://www.libreoffice.org/

It's a fork of the original Open Office. When they split, the most active OO developers went with LO. It's actively updated/maintained. Lots of help links all over the web if you need help. In my experience, it delivers all I want/need.

Been using LibreOffice for a number of years and prefer it to the M$ junk.

I'll give it a try. I know it opens MS *.doc files, but do the Word templates that I use as letterheading all operate the same? Excel, etc?

I don't use templates so I cannot say personally. When writing letters at work, we always used letterhead. At home, I just printed on plain paper with no special setup. That said, viewing a letter/file from someone else should be fine.

I did a quick search about MS Word templates to Libre. Here are a couple of results...
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/diy...o-libreoffice/
http://en.libreofficeforum.org/node/1004
Sounds like they may work or they may not.

As for Excel, I would surmise it should be compatible. But that's just my guess...

LibreOffice Calc opens Excel for me. Nothing fancy in my old excel docs though.

Downloaded but have yet to install. Will try LO in my virtual machine first, along with my letterhead template.

Thanks for the links.