Mass conversion of Office 2003 files to Office 2007?

[Xylob the Destroyer]

Hey all,

I've got about 300 Excel (.xls) workbooks that were created in Office 2003.
Some of them link to others and now that we have Office 2007 at work some of them aren't playing nicely with each other in the new version of Excel...

Is there a way to convert all of those "old" .xls files to the new .xlsx Excel workbook format without opening each file individually and resaving it in the new format?
I tried just changing the file extension with a batch renaming program, but Excel 2007 didn't like that -- it said: "Excel cannot open the file 'MAC 03.xlsx' because the file format of file extension is not valid. Verify that the file has not been corrupted and that the file extension matches the format of the file.".
So just renaming the files isn't gonna work...

I tried Googling this but apparently I'm not using the right search terms(?).
Spent about an hour on Micro$oft's Office page, but couldn't find anything there either...

I really don't want to have to open each file individually and then resave each file as the new format.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

TIA!

[PhoneMatt]

You might try utteraccess.com. It is a forum devoted to Excel and Access questions. Most of the people on there are very helpful.
Matt

[Xylob the Destroyer]

Sweet!!! Thanks Matt!

[redwudz]

I remember the same sort of problems going from Office 97 to 2003. (Our office still uses 97 on the majority of their computers. )

You would think they would include a batch converter with the newer program as they know it's going to be a problem. What ever happened to backward compatibility? And of course your converted files won't open in 2003, so there will be complaints from users that haven't updated. I'll stick with 2003 a bit longer. Good luck, though.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

Yeah, I bought Office 2007 when it first came out through a special program at work -- $27.00 for the full-on super bad-ass version with ALL the bells and whistles.

Stuck the disc in to install and says upgrade from 2003 to 2007 isn't possible (even though we just did it at work...) and that I must first un-install 2003.
So I run the settings and files wizard in 2003 and uninstall.
Install 2007 and there is no way to import all the shit I saved from 2003 with it's wizard!

So I uninstalled 2007 and re-installed 2003.
Archived and backed-up some shit like my .pst and some other stuff.
Uninstalled 2003 (again) and re-installed 2007 (again).

Told Outlook 2007 to use my existing .pst and it said it couldn't because it was incompatible/unknown!

Uninstall 2007 and reinstall 2003....

[redwudz]

That unfortunatelly sounds very familiar. I try not to be a MS basher, but they make it difficult. There's always Open Office, though I also have problems with their programs at times.

[MOVIEGEEK]

I have Office 2007 installed and I save everything as 97-2003 compatible,I know it's a pain but renaming the extension won't work.Another option is to install the Office 2007 converter on the older systems:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb7...displaylang=en

[rubberman]

i had office XP pro and wanted to install office 03's publisher only and it erased all of Office XP except for Frontpage. So i went back and install all of Office2003 and frontpage stayed there. but i did try to install OfficeXP frontpage only on office2003 computer and it wiped out all of office2003 on another computer

[Midzuki]

AFAIK still there are lots of people who refuse to deal with the "better"
*.???x file formats from Office 2007. I am not aware of any utility for
batch-converting from .doc/.xls/.mdb into .docx/.xlsx/.mdbx. The new
MSOffice file formats are actually XML-based and consist of several files
wrapped in a .zip archive.