Many individuals are reporting that they have purchased and are having issues with the latest version of Microsoft Office. The new office package is much more visually driven, with drop-down menus from the top being almost eliminated completely. The UAA IT Services Call Center has its "fingers on the pulse" of Office and the major differences between it and the previous versions.

Currently the most common complaint about the new office suite is it's lack of backward compatibility. For the average user, this means that the files created by the student using Microsoft Word 2007 is not readable by their instructor, or colleague. This is a major break from past versions that allowed users that functionality. By understanding a little about the Office suite, it is fairly simplistic to ensure that anyone can read your documents, as there are several options:

1. The first option is to ask whomever sent you the document to use the "Save As" item in the drop down list and then select to save the document as a Word 2003/97 file format. Then regardless of version (at least back to Office 97) the reader will be able to view the file.

2. The second option is to install the FileFormatter distributed by Microsoft, available here, and then your Office 2003 will have the functions necessary to read the 2007 file format.

Currently, Office 2007 is not supported by the UAA IT Call Center, however they are testing it and should publish a release date soon.