{"id":5735,"date":"2014-01-24T00:01:55","date_gmt":"2014-01-24T07:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5735"},"modified":"2014-01-18T14:12:12","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T21:12:12","slug":"updating-your-old-word-documents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5735","title":{"rendered":"Updating Your Old Word Documents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Word 2007 introduced a new document format. Along with it came a tornado of confusion and anger.
\n
\nThe new Word document format is known by its filename extension, DOCX<\/code>. I pronounce that, “Dock-eks.”<\/p>\n

The old Word document format, which has been around since probably Word version 6 (in the early 1990s), was DOC<\/code>. Everyone called it “Dock,” which I assume is short for document<\/em> and not doctor<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Microsoft took a risk changing file formats, but it was necessary. Word does a lot more with the new DOCX<\/code> files than it did with the old DOC<\/code> files. The transition, however, was torrential.<\/p>\n

Older versions of Word all used the same DOC <\/code>format. It was quite popular. Those older programs could not, however, open the newer DOCX <\/code>file format.<\/p>\n

A file conversion utility was introduced, but most folks — myself included — simply saved our Word 2007 documents using the older, compatible DOC<\/code> file format. I did the same until about two months ago.<\/p>\n

The DOCX <\/code>file format has proliferated long enough (seven years, by golly!) so that it’s pretty well-known. Rare is the person still using Word 2003 (eleven years old, by gum!).<\/p>\n

The problem for me isn’t document exchange, it’s updating my older documents from the DOC<\/code> file format to DOCX<\/code>.<\/p>\n

I don’t need to mass convert the documents. I simply make the change whenever I open an older DOC<\/code> file. Here is the best and probably most official way to make that change:<\/p>\n

1. Open your old DOC<\/code> file.<\/strong> It opens just fine and appears on the screen in Word, ready for editing and abuse.<\/p>\n

2. Click the File tab.<\/strong> If necessary, click the Info item on the left side of the screen. On the right side of the screen you see information about the document, shown in Figure 1.<\/p>\n

\"Figure

Figure 1. Converting an older DOC file.<\/p><\/div>\n

3. Click the Convert button, as shown in Figure 1.<\/strong><\/p>\n

4. If a warning dialog box appears, click the OK button.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The warning basically repeats what I’m writing here, which is weird because Microsoft wrote that dialog box years before I wrote this blog post.<\/p>\n

The document is transmogrified into the new DOCX<\/code> file format, but it’s not yet saved.<\/p>\n

5. Save the document.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click the Save icon or choose File \/ Save As and the new DOCX<\/code> format is chosen automatically.<\/p>\n

The document is saved using the new DOCX<\/code> format and, as a bonus, the older DOC<\/code> file still exists. You can delete it if you like, or keep it for nostalgic reasons, although freeing up the disk space is nice. (One bonus of the DOCX<\/code> file format is that it’s compressed and takes up less storage space.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The transformation is complete. Just about everyone these days uses the new Word document format, the DOCX.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-5735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-word"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5735"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5746,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5735\/revisions\/5746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}