VOGONS


First post, by Kahenraz

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For those who don't know, there is a retired addon by Microsoft called the "Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system" that adds the ability to load and save Office 2007-formatted files such as .docx.

The files are too large to upload here and is no longer available from Microsoft. But I found some mirrors online:

https://msassist.com/files/MSOffice/Compatibi … tConverters.exe
https://msassist.com/files/MSOffice/Compatibi … lfile-en-us.exe

These are pretty cool in that you can use this with an old version of Office on a vintage computer to edit documents for tasks of today.

Reply 1 of 15, by Errius

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There was also a command line utility whose name I forget that enabled you to convert .DOC files to .DOCX.

I remember using this circa 2010 to mass-convert all of my old Word documents to the new format.

ETA: It was the The Office File Converter (OFC) (ofc.exe) tool, part of the Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM) (MigrationPlanningManager.exe)

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 5 of 15, by Azarien

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Joakim wrote on 2021-07-23, 16:16:

Actually you could just rename them to .doc for backwards compatibility when docx was new. Not sure if it is still the case though.

What's the point of such renaming, when doc and docx are internally very different?

Reply 6 of 15, by Caluser2000

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Does no one use RTF this days...😉

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 7 of 15, by Joakim

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Azarien wrote on 2021-07-23, 18:58:
Joakim wrote on 2021-07-23, 16:16:

Actually you could just rename them to .doc for backwards compatibility when docx was new. Not sure if it is still the case though.

What's the point of such renaming, when doc and docx are internally very different?

I just remember that I tried this when docx was new and was able to read it in an older version of office. Just for viewing of course..

Reply 9 of 15, by Errius

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RTF is nice but the files get very big when you start embedding images. I remember Word being unable to save RTF files over a certain size. Not sure if this limitation still exists.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 10 of 15, by cyclone3d

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Renaming will not work anymore as far as I know since .docx files are now xml.

If you load an old .docx file and then save it in a more recent version, it will want to upgrade to the newer format.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 11 of 15, by leileilol

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Errius wrote on 2021-07-23, 16:20:

How are people reading old Microsoft Write and Works files on modern systems?

Surprisingly, LibreOffice supports .WRI and Works 2.0 files. I really hate the long initialization and big bloat of that though

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 12 of 15, by cyclone3d

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leileilol wrote on 2021-07-23, 21:35:
Errius wrote on 2021-07-23, 16:20:

How are people reading old Microsoft Write and Works files on modern systems?

Surprisingly, LibreOffice supports .WRI and Works 2.0 files. I really hate the long initialization and big bloat of that though

Libre Office doesn't work properly with certain formatting such as bullet points from at least newer versions of MS word files. It won't even copy them much less continue a bullet list when you hit return to go to the next line.

I have Libre Office on one of my laptops and was trying to edit a Word document I made with Office 2019 on my main desktop. It didn't go well so I said screw it and went and edited it on my main desktop.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 13 of 15, by Caluser2000

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There is WPS Office...

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 15 of 15, by chinny22

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Kahenraz wrote on 2021-07-25, 12:51:

Was anyone else a fan of Corel WordPerfect?

Dad used WP 6.1 because of work on our first PC, it looked pretty complex. Our highschool used Works 2.0 and our PC came with 3.0 so I stuck with that.

Last week my work PC was upgraded from Office 2016 to 2019, annnnnd everything's moved again, great.
Today I've been remoted onto a customers computer running 2010. Still not as easy to find things as Office 2k-03 toolbar but your in with a chance.
Now you spend an extra few seconds trying to find the button if it shows at all.