Ithaca College

Whether you knew it or not, when you installed Office 2007 on your office workstation, by default, your files were set to save in the Office 2003 file format (.doc, .xls and .ppt). At the time, the IC community was using multiple versions of Office and the Mac 2004 version couldn't read the new XML file formats used by Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Mac. That's all changed now. With the release of the Mac converter and Office 2008, plus the compatibility pack for Windows, all users on campus should be able to read documents in the new file formats (.docx, .xlsx and .pptx). ITS would like you to change your default setting and begin using the new file formats.

To change the default file format for Word, Excel and PowerPoint follow these steps:

• Open Microsoft Word
• Click the Office button (the round button in the top left corner of the window)
• Click Word Options at the bottom of the menu
• Click Save in the left menu
• Next to Save files in this format: choose Word Document (*.docx)
• Click OK
• Exit Word

Repeat for both Excel and PowerPoint by launching each of those applications and following the above steps.

Excel: Choose the Excel Workbook format
PowerPoint: Choose the PowerPoint Presentation format

Files created and saved after the change will have the new extensions of .docx (Word), .xlsx (Excel), and .pptx (PowerPoint). Files that existed before the change will retain the original .doc, .xls, or .ppt extension. To convert existing files to the new format, open the file and use the Save As option. Note that this will create a second version of the file with the new extension; the original version of the file should be deleted to avoid confusion.

If you have any questions contact the Helpdesk.

ITS Helpdesk
102 Muller Center
helpdesk@ithaca.edu
4-3282