File Type Blues . . . or Why Can't I Open this Document?

Now that many of our students are using Blackboard to deliver documents and presentations to teachers, it's probably time for a primer on working with different file types so that we can avoid some stress in the future.

The district is slowly rolling out Office 2007, but most teachers are still using are using Office 2003 in the classroom and at home. The most frequently-used application in that suite of productivity products is Word 2003, which saves files in the *.doc format. Unfortunately, not all of our students have access to the same applications. How can we all speak the same file type language?

First, Office 2003 users should download the Microsoft Compatibility Patch for Office 2007, which is linked from the title of this posting and from the "Helpful Links" bar on the right of this blog. It's quick and painless, and it allows Word 2003 users to open Word 2007 documents that are saved in the *.docx format. (Note: Office 2007 is backward compatible, meaning that it has not problem opening documents from an earlier version of Office.)

However, students can also be taught to save their documents in the format specified by the teachers. Here are some examples:

• Students using Office 2007 products can be taught to “save down” to the Office 97-2003 format. It is accomplished by clicking the Microsoft icon and selecting Save As / Word 97-2003 document.
• Student using Microsoft Works (the documents end with .wps) can be taught to select File /Save As / Word 97-2000 & 6.0/95 – RTF(*.doc) or Word 97-2003 (*doc), depending on the Works version.
• Students using Word Perfect also have the option of saving as Word 97-2003 (*.doc) in the Save As / File Type drop-down menu box.

Finally, what about students who don't have office/productivity applications at home? I recommend Open Office, a free suite of products that are quite similar to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Students who use these applications at school will quickly adapt to the Open Office format, and they can save their work in the Office 2003 format.

I look forward to your experiences in sharing this information with other teachers and with students. Feel free to add Comments to this posting using the options below.