PowerPoint 2007 Files to PowerPoint 2003

Problem:

I did a PowerPoint on Microsoft office 2007 saved it on a flash drive, then went to another computer to load it on an older version of PowerPoint and it wouldn't open.

Answer:


This is from a question on Yahoo Answer. The next time when you need to ask question, you can say clearly what the older PowerPoint version is so that we don’t need to guess and say if this, if that. Anyway, I assume that the “another computer” has PowerPoint 2003 installed.

So the question would be how to make the PowerPoint 2007 file work on PowerPoint 2003. Please note that it is on “another computer”.

I came up 3 solutions for this question.

1. Change the PowerPoint format.

From PowerPoint 2007, the PowerPoint formats have changed, with an “X” as the suffix. Another trick of Microsoft to force users to upgrade their PowerPoint and pay once more. Anyway, older PowerPoint versions, say PowerPoint 2003 cannot open PowerPoint 2007 files.

You can click the “Office button” the round one with Microsoft logo on it and choose “Save As” and you will find the “PowerPoint 1997-2003 Presentation” on the right. That’s it. Save a copy of the PowerPoint 2007 file as PPT format so that you can open with PowerPoint 2003 directly.

2. Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack

PowerPoint 2003 users can also install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack that enables you to open PowerPoint 2007 file directly in 2003.

It seems wonderful with the above two methods. But think about the following two problems:

A. The new features you included in PowerPoint 2007 will not be available if you use PowerPoint 2003 to view it.

B. To move the PowerPoint 2007 to “another computer” with PowerPoint 2003 installed, you should also copy the inserted music and videos with the PowerPoint file too, and make sure that you put them in the same folder, has the same path as the old computer. If not, you need to insert again and reset the parameters.

3. Convert PowerPoint 2007 to video

We can save PowerPoint 2007 to PDF too, and the reason why we convert PowerPoint 2007 to video is that you can save all the PowerPoint 2007 effects like the animations, transitions, music and video clips in the output video and in the right, proper order.

The output video can be played on any computer with media player installed like Windows Media Player or even QuickTime Player on Mac.

Have you any other solutions for this topic?