Save As "Word 97-2003 Document" format does not save an RTF file i

[Alfontz]

Thanks for reviewing this question.

Word 2007 does not convert a RTF file to the Word 97 (DOC) format when using
Save As and selecting the type: Word 97-2003 Document format.

To reproduce:

Open Word 2007 add some text to the document
Select Save As and the file type "Word 97-2003 & 6.0/95 RTF (*.doc)"
Note file is saved in the RTF format
Select Save As and set the type to "Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)"
Use the same file name.
Notice you will be prompted to save the file again. (This is very annoying
to our customers)
Open the file in notepad and notice it is RTF.
Same steps in Word 2003 will convert the file to the doc format.

Our issue is when files are converted from PDF they are saved in this old
RTF Doc format. This is a problem since our applications rely on the doc
format and features not available in the old rtf format.

Thanks for suggestions,

Al

 

[Graham Mayor]

This is a security issue to prevent you saving different file formats with
the same name and reflects the fact that Word 2007 uses a different internal
file format from earlier versions. If you change the extension of your RTF
files to RTF or change the name of the document when you save it, you won't
get a conflicting filename and Word will be able to save the document. Word
is not saving the RTF document as Word 97-2003 format. What you are seeing
is the *same* document.

The alternative is to save as docx as an intermediate step which will free
the RTF lock file and allow you to save over it. Note that you would have to
then close the document to free the docx lock file to allow the docx version
to be deleted. It should be possible to workaround the issue with a macro
e.g.

Dim sFname As String
With ActiveDocument
sFname = .FullName
If Right(sFname, 3) = "doc" Then
.SaveAs sFname & "x", wdFormatXMLDocument
.SaveAs sFname, wdFormatDocument97
.Close
Kill sFname & "x"
Documents.Open sFname
End If
End With



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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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