Search form

You are here

Can earlier versions of Microsoft Office documents be opened using the newest versions of Office?

Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 365, or Office 2013 users can open documents created without any additional action. Customers using earlier versions of Office may need to download and install a compatibility pack.

If you are using Microsoft Office Word 2007 or Word 2010, you can open .docx or .docm files that were created in Word 2019, 2016 and 2013. However, a few newer features may not be supported in older versions or they may not be editable. For example, equations in later files are converted to images in earlier versions of Word, which can’t be edited.

Although people who use previous versions of Microsoft Office and have installed the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats, can open documents that are saved in the Microsoft Office Word 2007 format, they may not be able to change some items that were created by using new or enhanced features.

randomness