Aftermath of Office 2007 Beta 2

Update: Part 2 of the Article.

Its been a few months after the final version of Office 2007 hit the retail stores. And to be honest, I was happy and eagerly waiting for the final version to come out and lay my hands on it. I was also a beta tester for Office 2007 (I assume many were) and its new interface and compressed saved files than earlier versions of Office were its major plus points.

A few days ago, I encountered a serious problem. I was left aghast when, Excel 2007 was unable to open a file which was saved in Beta 2. The file was important & confidential and losing it would mean I was screwed badly. The error read was: This workbook was created in an earlier beta version of Excel 2007, and it cannot be opened in the current version of Excel. To open the workbook, you must first open and save it in Excel 2007 Beta 2, and then you can open it in the current version of Excel. The same error came in Word 2007 but was able to convert the file. WTF, why not Excel then?

The only lame solution it gave was to uninstall the final version and re-install the Beta 2. Come on, I don’t want to waste a few hours of my precious time, I need something quick. Another couple of solutions I found out was to modify the registry or run gpedit.msc. However, I found a much easier and hasslefree solution. I pointed my browser towards Google Docs. Here’s how I did it:

Open Google Docs
Upload the file
Uploaded file is shown
Export the file to .XLS format: File > Export > .XLS
Download the file and you’re done.
Now Excel 2007 will open this file under compatibility mode.

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