Hi there Kapiti SeniorNet members and website followers! Happy New Year – I hope 2014 is a great year for you and your family and that all the special things you want, happen along the way.

I’ve decided (call it a New Year’s Resolution if you like) that during 2014, I’m going to be more active posting onto the SeniorNet website and not let Thor hog the stage 🙂

My focus will be on Techie Tips which I hope will compliment Thor’s more philosophical articles. With Windows 8 roaring into centre stage and huge pressure on XP users to migrate to Win 7 or 8, there are no shortage of things for me to write about.

I’m going to start the New Year though with some catchup stuff that I came across by accident while on the Microsoft Support site. If you’re an MS Office user (2007/2010), have an older copy of Office (eg Office 97 or 2003?) or just receive the occasional Office document that you struggle to read, this will be useful.

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Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats

Install this compatibility pack if you use Office 2000 or 2003 and would like to open, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations that were created in the newer versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 3 (SP3)

Service Pack 3 provides the latest updates to the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite. This update also applies to Microsoft Office Project, Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer, Microsoft Office Visio, and Visual Web Developer.

2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS

This download is a must-have and allows you to export and save to the PDF and XPS formats in all eight 2007 Microsoft Office programs. It also allows you to “send as e-mail attachment” in the PDF and XPS formats in a subset of these programs. This feature is built into Office 2010 but you need this Add-on to activate the capabilities in Office 2007

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Viewers are provided by Microsoft for people who don’t have an MS Office License but still need to read Office documents. They are also extremely helpful if you have an older version of Office and don’t want to upgrade. They are backward and forward compatible and will display any known Office format you may receive. More importantly, they display the document in the way the originator wanted it displayed. The only catch is that they are “read-only” Viewers – you are unable to change the document at all. So, if you don’t have Office or your version is older and can’t read the new formats, you should grab these three viewers for a rainy day.

Word Viewer

View, print and copy Word documents, even if you don’t have Word installed. This download is also a replacement for the Word Viewer 2003 and all previous Word Viewer versions.

PowerPoint Viewer

Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer lets you view full-featured presentations created in PowerPoint 97 and later versions. Download it here

Excel Viewer

Open, view, and print Excel workbooks (spreadsheets), even if you don’t have Excel installed. This download is also a replacement for the Excel Viewer 97 and all previous Excel Viewer versions.

Remember that if you need help installing software (like this), we have a monthly
How Do I…? Workshop where you can get one-on-one help from our experienced tutors. See the current Workshop Timetable for details of times and dates.

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