Convert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 Format

Excel 2007 can open a document from a previous version of outlook in Compatibility Mode, but if you want to take advantage of some of the new features you’ll need to convert the document.(You can use 1.1 million rows in Excel 2007 instead of only 65k in previous versions)

When you open a document from a previous version, you can see [Compatibility Mode] in the title bar.

To convert the document, click on the Microsoft Office button in the left hand corner, and then click on Convert.

You should be prompted to save the converted document to a new filename. 

Once the document is saved, now you’ll need to close the current one and reopen the converted document. Thankfully there’s a ridiculously wide dialog window that will let you do that automatically. 

You can see that the new window doesn’t say “[Compatibility Mode]” in the title bar anymore.

Mysticgeek is the resident IT expert at How-To Geek and a huge rock music fan. His daily articles can be found at Mysticgeek's Realm. This article was written on 06/22/07 and tagged with: Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook

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Comments (4)

1. December 8, 2008 12:05 pm
   michael Lui

   How is the fastest way to convert 3000+ files from Excel 2003 to Excel 2007 besides the obvious way of converting each file individually?

   Thanks.

2. April 22, 2009 9:55 pm
   MJM

   I have hundrerds of Excel 2003 that i want to convert to Excel 2007. Any short cuts other than opening and converting them individually?

   Thanks

3. May 14, 2009 1:26 am
   John Mitchell

   Thanks, but the description on this page seems to involve opening each one individually. What have I missed?

4. June 14, 2009 6:08 pm
   Kevin

   I get a excel statistical workbook from a friend with 3 worksheets that have formulas relating to each sheet that’s in 97-03 version – when I open with 2007, some of the formulas do not calculate – I get this #VALUE! in the cell that should have information from the other 2 sheets in some of the cells. Please help, thanks