Not really sure why but it doesn't seem to matter.Ħ. You will not need this for the ppt or xls utilities.ĭon't worry about selecting Use DDE, it will get selected automatically for you. The third is the extra command argument required by the wordconv.exe utility. The second parameter is the executable to use for the conversation, in this case wordconv.exe because we are working with a DOC file type. The first parameter is the full file path for the file to perform the action on, which is passed as the first parameter to the Action. For the Application used to perform action type ConvertO2k3To2k7.bat '%1' wordconv.exe -nme From the Edit File Type dialogue create a New Actionĥ. Select the DOC File Type and click Advancedģ. In Explorer choose Tools -> Folder Options -> File TypesĢ. Here are the steps to create create the action for a Word File Type:ġ. Now for each type of file (doc, xls, and ppt) I add a new Action. (This is a little kludgy but it works.)Īgain make sure you save this file in the Windows directory. The full path for the original Office 2k3 file, the executable to use for converting the file, and the third is the extra command line argument used for the wordconv.exe utility. Here are the individual commands for converting each type of file: Apparently the OMPM actually calls these executables directly from the OFC.exe utility. In the Office Compatibility Pack there are individual utilities that convert files from the old format to the new format. It is possible to use the Office Compatibility Pack directly to convert legacy Office files individually to the new Office 2007 Open XML format. The one of interest to me was the Office File Converter utility (OFC.exe) This tool seems to be great for bulk converting office files to the new 2007 format but that really isn't what I wanted to do.įortunately I stumbled upon something posted on the OMPM contributions page that was promising. The OMPM consists of a number of things including utilities for bulk file conversion. This post pointed me to the Microsoft Office Migration Planning Manager.

My early searches led me to Eric White's post Bulk Convert DOC to DOCX. Naturally I wanted to leverage the work they had already done if possible. I started looking around and found that you could do this from code but there are also tools that Microsoft have provided to automate the bulk conversion of legacy Office files to the newer format.

I typically think of this situation when I go to email a file that is in the older format and think to myself 'Gee if it was a 2k7 file it would be smaller.' I know you can simply open the file in its associated Office 2007 application and save as the newer format but this seemed like too much work for me. I wanted an explorer add-in that would allow me to right click on an Office 2003 or earlier format document and convert it to an Office 2007 format.

Microsoft office file converter pack