Special Edition Using® Microsoft® Office Word 2003

The Word 2003 File Format

The Word 2003 file format has not changed substantially since Word 97, so you can freely exchange files between Word versions 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003, as well as Word 98 and higher for the Macintosh. This makes it easy and convenient to exchange files with people who use older Word versions. No special save procedure is required. Any 2003 features that the earlier version of Word might not support are simply ignored when the file is opened in the older software.

Saving Word Files in Other File Formats

Word's backward compatibility extends back only as far as Word 97 with its default file format. If you need to exchange files with colleagues who use Microsoft Word 95 (Word 6.0), you'll need to take special measures to ...