O2003 to O2007 Mass Conversion

D

Dawn Smith - OKC

We are looking for a consultation firm that can assist in a mass conversion
of approx 1 million documents from Office 2003 and earlier to Office 2007.
Does anyone know of a company that can do that?
 
L

LVTravel

Not to cause myself not to make money but ... If these are Word documents
why does your company need these documents converted from '03 and earlier
file format to '07 file format? Office '07 will appropriately open all Word
documents from Word 6.0 (Windows 3.1 version of Office 4.3) to '03 files.

I can see having earlier Publisher documents converted if that is what you
mean.
 
D

Dawn Smith - OKC

There are many reasons for the conversion. Number one is called
roundtripping a document. Most commonly heard during the mass conversions
from WordPerfect to Word. The programming basis for O2003 and earlier is
completely different from the xml format used in O2007. We use a document
management system that is a central repository for documents. All documents
are profiled and indexed. If documents are not converted and "cleaned"
during the conversion to 02007 you can see issues with legacy programming.
Some of the things that have problems are documents with stored macros,
styles, table of contents or table of authorities, imbedded images, etc.
Sometimes you can get a great result and sometimes you do not. Just like
when you open a WordPerfect document using Word's conversion utilities not
everything is as it was and sometimes legacy components are interpreted
incorrectly by the new program.

All of our documents are used over and over. The doc is opened they save a
new copy and then modify the doc. We already see problems just with
documents that were originally created in 97 or 2000 -- pagination off,
headers in the wrong location, tables splitting incorrectly, etc. There are
many companies that offer utilities to deal with these issues, but we were
wanting to look for someone to help us get a fresh start on our documents.
We want to make sure that the documents we work with in O2007 do not
perpetuate existing problems and are stable from the get go. We are looking
at this upgrade in the same light as an upgrade from WordPerfect to Word as
it is not a true "upgrade" but completely different programming. Granted it
is smoother since the product is from the same company :)
 
L

LVTravel

Thanks for the response back. I, and the others on this NG, now understand
why the conversions need to be done and I hope someone can give guidance in
your search for a company to do those conversions. Looks like a really
expensive proposition since each document will have to be checked and
rechecked after the conversion according to your company's needs.

Good luck on your search.
 
Top