How to use earlier versions of Microsoft
Office to open, edit, and save Office 2007 files.
If you are receiving a large number of student submissions in the Office 2007 format and you have not yet transitioned to that version of Microsoft Office you can download readers from Microsoft that allow Office 2003, Office XP, and Office 2000 applications to open, edit, and save Office 2007 files.
For each of the earlier versions of Office you must download several updates before downloading the Compatibility Pack. Complete instructions are provided at the Microsoft web site below.
Unless you are computer savvy, it might be easier to have your students save the files in a backwards-compatible format as shown in the table previously.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924074