.docx files mystery

I am still on Office 2003 with Windows XP so cannot open .docx files without converting. A friend who has a new computer but assures me she still has Office 2003 can open .docx files which is odd for a start. She was sent a .docx file and passed it on to a group of us so I converted it and it finished up as 118KB. Someone else in the group told her she couldn't open it either so I asked my friend to save it back as Word 2003 and send it to me to check it was OK as it seems easier to send in that format rather than anyone who can't open it having to convert.

Having watched it painfully download I saw it came as nearly 6.8MB :eek:

Is it possible to open a .docx file with an old version of Word but later Windows?

Why did the size increase so much? I have compared both files, the one I converted and the one she saved back - they look identical.

The Windows version makes no difference whatsoever. Microsoft have released a free compatibility pack to allow files created with a newer version of Office to be opened by an older version.

Not sure why the newer file is so much bigger tho' - I'll be sticking with 2003 for the forseeable future as I really don't like the context-sensitive toolbars in the newer versions.

I don't know why Microsoft can't just pick a standards compliant format instead of doing their own proprietary crap.

Anyway the file size is larger because later versions of office save a preview picture of the document as part of the file, this can be turned off, but it's on by default.

The compatibility pack actually does a conversion then opens it so a particularly complicated document or one with a large macro set (usually legal, journalist or similar documents) sometimes won't display properly.

I've had better luck reading the Microsoft XML file formats using using Libre/Open Office

I agree it would be much easier if they didn't mess about with different formats. Looks as if I'll have to stick with using one of the free converter sites, which work fine, and circulate the result. Still puzzled that my friend with 2003 could open it - odd.

or save/use rich text format option [.RTF]

then no-one will have any issues no matter what package they use.

dx