Files produced by Excel 2007 are in the new .xlsx format. No other version of Excel can read them unless a special compatibility pack has been installed.
If you plan to share your Excel 2007 files with other Excel users, set Excel 2007 to save your files automatically in Excel 97-2003 format. This will allow other Excel users to read them.
How to set Excel 2007 to automatically save files in Excel 97-2003 format:
Start up Excel 2007. Open an empty worksheet.
Click the Office button at top left (the one with the four colour Windows 2003 logo).
This brings up a menu with: New – Open – Convert - Save – Save As etc.
At the bottom, click onto the “Excel options” tab.
There’s a list of options to the left, headed “Popular”.
Click onto the fourth one down – Save
To the right of Save it says: Save Files in this format . In the box it says: Excel Workbook.
Click on the down arrow at the right of the box. A list appears.
Highlight the fourth one – Excel 97-2003. Click OK at the bottom.
To check that your change has worked:
You should now be back in the blank Excel worksheet.
Click on the coloured Office button again.
This time select: Save As
The Save As box appears. At the bottom it should say: Save as type: Excel 97-2003 workbook.
[Thanks to reader SteffiBC for this tip]
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