Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office XP

Avoiding Compatibility Problems

If you commonly exchange Word documents with people who use other versions of Word, or other word processors in general, one of your first concerns is file compatibility.

Using Different Word File Formats

The default file format for documents you create with Word 2002 is fully compatible with Word 97 and Word 2000, although there are some minor differences. For example, if you create a nested table in Word 2002, and then open it in Word 97, the nested table is gone. The data's still there—in a single cell, with paragraph marks after each item that had been in its own cell—but if you make any sort of change to the document in Word 97 and save it, the nested table won't reappear in Word 2002, either.

In general, ...