Before You Upgrade to Office 2000

Strategies for Sharing Files Among Different Versions of Office

In many organizations, upgrading takes place gradually — one group of users at a time. During the upgrade process, users need to share files among Microsoft Office 2000 and previous versions of Office. There are several strategies that your workgroup can use to facilitate the sharing of files.

In Office 2000, you can open a file created in an earlier version of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or Microsoft PowerPoint® — without losing any data or formatting. When you save a file created in a previous version of Office, however, not all of the new features in Word 2000, Excel 2000, and PowerPoint 2000 are supported.

By default, Word 2000, Excel 2000, and PowerPoint 2000 save new files in the Office 97-2000 format — that is, Office 97, Office 98 for the Macintosh, and Office 2000. If users in your workgroup use an earlier version of these applications, you can change the default file format for saving new files by using the Options dialog box (Tools menu) or the System Policy Editor. All files are saved in the default format unless you specify a different file format in the Save As dialog box (File menu).

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Saving Office 2000 files in an earlier format

When you create a file in Office 2000, you can save that file in an earlier version of Office. For example:

• Word 2000 users can save files in Word 6.0/95 or Word 2.x format.
• Excel 2000 users can save files in Excel 5.0/95 or Excel 4.0 format.
• PowerPoint 2000 users can save files in PowerPoint 95 or PowerPoint 4.0 format.

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Saving Office 2000 files in a dual file format

Word 2000, Excel 2000, and PowerPoint 2000 users can save files in a dual file format. For example:

• Word 2000 users can save files in Word 97-2000 & 6.0/95-RTF format.
• Excel 2000 users can save files in Microsoft Excel 97-2000 & 5.0/95 Workbook format.
• PowerPoint 2000 users can save files in PowerPoint 97-2000 & 95 Presentation format.

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Saving Office 2000 files as Web pages

When you save a file in the Web Page format, Word 2000, Excel 2000, and PowerPoint 2000 work behind the scenes to create HTML tags for text, graphics, sounds, and videos that Web browsers can use for these features in a Web page.

All Word 2000, Excel 2000, and PowerPoint 2000 application features can import and export through HTML by using the Extensible Markup Language (XML).

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See also

For more information about sharing files with a specific version of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, see Office 2000 Upgrading Reference.

You can change the default file format that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint use when saving new files. For more information, see How to Specify the Default Format in Which to Save Files and Using the System Policy Editor.

You can save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files in Web Page format. For more information, see Transferring Files Between HTML and Office Document Formats.