How can I open 2007 or 2008 documents in my current version of  MS Office?

Recently, because of the release of Microsoft Office 2008 for the Macintosh & 2007 for Windows, We have been receiving a lot of requests from students who are unable to open the new default DOCX format that is saves Word or  PPTX Powerpoints documents. Ostensibly, this is because the school is running Mac Office 2004 & 2003, versions incompatible with the new format.

Saving  a Backward Compatible Version of Office 2007/2008 Format (.DOC)

• One way to deal with the issue is to ask the student to re-save the file for you in a backwards compatible manner. This would mean simply opening the document again, selecting “Save As” from the “File” drop menu and then selecting the “Word 97-2004 Document (.doc)” format option.
• For the time being, it probably makes sense for them to do this by default , as the school is still in the process of upgrading to compatible versions of Microsoft Office both on the Macintosh and on Windows. Teachers themselves don’t necessarily need to upgrade to a new version but perhaps just install software updates for Office
  

• Windows:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en
• Apple:   http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/5/8/158d6d58-43f8-4334-9d3f-479010fbcad7/OpenXMLConverter100.dmg