[Question] Microsoft Office 2003 Support

[Frank Curtis]

My question: I understand the Microsoft will no longer support Office 2003 after April 2014. I have saved all my past backups using Microsoft Office 2003. Will I be able to open these on say, Microsoft Office 2012 or later? Also if I attach a Microsoft Office 2003 document to an email and send it to a person that only has this later version will that person be able to open it?

[Justloadit]

I can only speak for Office 2010, where the answer is yes.
However if you save the file in Office 2010 as a 2010 file, previous versions of office will not be able to open the file.

[Frank Curtis]

Okay that you for this. I am lead to understand by someone else that 2003 Access databases will be a problem on 2012. Not too sure if you know anything about this?

[irneb]

Okay that you for this. I am lead to understand by someone else that 2003 Access databases will be a problem on 2012. Not too sure if you know anything about this?

That might be an issue, but I doubt it. What could happen is that the older MDB file's forms and reports don't work or become glitchy. The data (i.e. tables / queries) should still be available.

The support discontinuance simply means MS won't make any more updates and bug fixes for 2003. They might later decide to remove the portions of their new software which converts to old data into the new, but that hasn't happened (yet). And if such happens you can always use other means to convert your files - e.g. borrow someone's PC with Access 2010 to open and re-save as accdb. If all else fails, your data should still be available through ODBC drivers or even through something like Libre/Open Office Base.

Though from my own experience, I've actually found that Word 2010 has formatting issues when opening a 2003 DOC file. Worse than opening the same file in Libre/Open Office ... strange, but that's what I've found.

[Frank Curtis]

Thank you very much for this information. Helps and it makes sense to save it as accdb. Grateful for the answer and for the existence of this forum. Have a good day