The easiest way to enable support for the new Office 2007 file formats in Office XP is to install the Migration pack provided by Microsoft free of cost. With the introduction of the XML standard in file format, the new files with extensions ending in x (docx, xslx, pptx) will not be compatible with the older Microsoft Office.

With Migration pack installed you can either save in all the New office supported formats as well as open all the new format files. Here is a screen shot of the Save As dialogue in Office XP with 2007 compatibility pack installed.

Main advantages f the new file format are that it is a standard XML format and also the compression ratio is better for the XML formats. You can open all the 2007 Office files using any archiving tool.

The Office 1007 compatibility pack is free of cost and can be downloaded form Microsoft Download center. You must install all High Priority updates from Microsoft update center before installing this pack. Here is the Office 2007 compatibility pack download page at Microsoft Download Center. The file is a 27.5Mb Windows Executable.

ZAMZAR is an online service which allows you to convert between many different file and media types. All this can be done for free when many softwares that lets you convert only between limited filetypes will blow a hole in your pocket. You can upload the file type to the ZAMZAR servers select the filetype to which you need to convert and provide your e-mail address. The link to th converted file will be sent to your mail.

ZAMZAR has got diffrent payed plans also which will let you store your files online and allows for larger files to be converted. Currently there is a limit of 100Mb on individual file size for the FREE plan. The only negetive about this is that the price tag is pretty heavy. If you have plenty of files to convert then it may be economical, but who on earth would spend a $47 to convert files for just one month.

ZAMZAR is now in its BETA stage and the developers doesen’t promise that the service will still be free when they are out of the Beta stage. But still it is one service that is payed and I would still recmmend to others.

You can convert between different file types of music, video, office docs, compressed archives and images. The following is a list of file types supported

Images :

bmp, gif, ico, jpg, pcx, png, tga, tiff, wbmp, wmf

Documents :

csv, doc, docx, html, odp, ods, odt, pcx, pdf, ppt, pptx, ps, pub, rtf, txt, wpd, wps, xls, xlsx, xml

Music :

aac, ac3, flac, m4a, mmf, mp3, ogg, ra, ram, wav, wma

Video :

3gp, 3g2, avi, flv, gvi, iphone, ipod, m4v, mov, mp4, mpg, ogg, rm, rmvb, vob, wmv

Compressed :

7z, tar.bz2, cab, lzh, rar, tar, tar.gz, yz1, zip

You can convert between any of these formats from the online menu. Another advantage is that you can add a file that is already online to be converted. That is you may provide the URL of the file and get it converted. As of now I am satisfied with the quality of the output file they are provideing.

Just remember that you have got no control over the conversions done by ZAMZAR be it file size or the quality.