At this point in time, you should be saving to Office 2007 or Office 2010 formats.

The compatibility check is a new feature of PowerPoint 2007. When you have saved a beautifully formatted 2007 PowerPoint presentation, have Office check the compatibility check with older versions of PowerPoint. PowerPoint 2010 is compatible with 2007.

For example, if your document contains SmartArt (which is a feature that is not supported in earlier versions of PowerPoint), when a colleague using PowerPoint 2003 opens your document, the SmartArt graphics will be converted into a single object that cannot be edited.

To have Office check the document for features that are not supported in earlier versions of Word, follow these steps:

Office 2007:

1. Click Office button.
2. Click Prepare in the left pane and click Run Compatibility Checker.

PowerPoint 2007 provides a report that lists the document's unsupported features and details what you can do, if anything, to make your document readable in earlier versions.

If you frequently e-mail documents in compatibility mode, you can have PowerPoint automatically run a compatibility check every time you save a file. To do so, select the Check Compatibility When Saving In PowerPoint 97-2003 Formats check box in the PowerPoint Compatibility Checker dialog box before clicking OK to close the compatibility report.

Office 2010:

Click File tab / Info / Prepare for Sharing
Click Check for Issues / Check Compatibility
To check your presentation for compatibility every time that you save it in a PowerPoint 97-2003 format, in the Microsoft PowerPoint Compatibility Checker dialog box, select the Check compatibility when saving in PowerPoint 97-2003 formats check box.
 

---

Created:   July 05, 2012

Sr. Arlene Callahan
Training Manager
Rivier University
Nashua, NH 03060

E-mail: acallahan@rivier.edu