Office '97 Support Lagged

Microsoft has a history of changing file formats in incompatible ways with almost every release. Microsoft Word '95 (and Word 6.1) cannot read the files produced by Word '97 unless they are explicitly saved by Word '97 in the older format.

Because the file formats for the Microsoft Office products change often, and Microsoft does not publish the file specifications, the file formats have to be reverse-engineered by others who wish to read those formats. StarOffice and other Linux office programs have done so for at least Word6.1/'95 format, with some support for Word '97.

Applixware has released their latest version of their office suite, version 4.4.1, with full Office '97 support, both importing and exporting.

There is a program that converts Word '97 files to HTML, which is incomplete but improving. Unfortunately, as long as Microsoft fails to learn how to make backward-compatible changes to file formats (see HTML for an example of how to do it right), competitors will always have to play catch-up in this area.