2007 Compatibilty Pack Issue

[centibite]

OS: XP Pro w/ Office 2003

I get the following error message when trying to open a docx document or save it as a docx. "There was an error opening the file." Excel works fine with opening and saving as docx. I have made new test docx documents and tried to open as well as open new document and try to save as docx. Reloaded Office and the compatibiliy bath but yield the same results.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[TonyJollans]

.docx files are Word files: Excel may well have trouble with them.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[centibite]

Tony,

Ah it is a typo, thanks for pointing that out. I ment to say excell opens .xlsx files fine after installing the compatibilty pack.

 

[centibite]

Ah it is a typo, thanks for pointing that out.

 

[chipk]

Did you, as Microsoft says: Users of the Microsoft Office XP and 2003 programs Word, Excel, or PowerPoint—please install all High-Priority updates from Microsoft Update before downloading the Compatibility Pack.

 

[TonyJollans]

So what can, or can't, you do? Open existing .xlsx files? If so, how were they created? Create new .xlsx files in 2003? If so, what error do you get.

The 'There was an error opening the file.' message may give a tad more information if you press the Detail (I think) button but is, I'm afraid, one of the worst error messages I've seen for a long time (in a strange environment where a good one could be really helpful). All it's really saying is that it thinks there is something wrong with the file and you are left to struggle with it. Hence my question about how the files were created.

Chipk's point about being up-to-date (or consistently out-of-date ) is a good one.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[centibite]

I can open 2007 Excel documents and create 2007 Excel documents with Excel 2003 with no problems. I can not create 2007 Word Documents nor open 2007 Word documents in Word 2003. The 2007 word documents I used for testing were created on a different workstation as follows:

Workstation 1 XP Pro / Word 2003 w/ compatibilty Pack
Created a new document and saved in 2007 format and transfered to the troubled workstation. The only data in the created document was the word test. Opening this document on the troubled workstation failed and gave the error mentioned above.

Workstation 2 XP Pro / Word 2007
Created a document and saved in default format (2007). The only data in this documents was the word test. Transfered this document to troubled workstation and yielded the error message when the document failed to open.

Troubled worksation XP Pro / Word 2003 w/ compatibility pack
Attempted to open both documents from Workstation 1 and 2, both of which failed with the error message. Created a new document and tried to save in 2007 format which failed and gave the error message. Created a new document once again and saved in default format (.doc) with no problems.

The reason I said something about Excel 2003 is because I have no issues with it after installing the Compatibily Pack. As far as clicking for more detail on the error message, there is no option. All I get is a box that says "There was an error opening the file."

I do not remember if the workstation has all the High Priority Updates installed for Word 2003, I will check that. Thanks for mentioning it, I didn't even think about that.

I let you know what I find out. Thanks,

Centibite

 

[TonyJollans]

Thanks for the clarification - I understand now; you just have this issue with one machine and it can neither read nor write 2007 format documents, although it appears to try.

It definitely sounds like a compatibility issue fo some sort on that one machine. I don't know the versions of Word and the compatibility pack may well be a critical factor (SP1, SP2, SP3).

I'll wait to her back.



Enjoy,
Tony

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[centibite]

I ended up just reloading the machine, being it was taking to much time to work on this one issue. I do appreciate all your help though.

On a side note: I did update to XP/SP3 and applied all the critical updates, but it made no difference.