Microsoft Word 2007 has amazing features which are more interactive and includes lot of dynamic objects. However these features and objects are not supported in older version I.e 97-2003 versions of office. So now if you prepare a word document using office 2007 and send to somebody who is having older version of office say 2003, what is going to happen is he will not be able to see those features and it will be a big mess. Here is small tip which you should always use to check if your word document is compatible or not.

• Click on the Home menu of Word 2007 ( located at top left )
• Then Click on Prepare and you will be greeted by lot of options.
• Click on the last option which says “Run Compatibility Checker“

It then checks which features will not run and give you an error message and will probably tell you what is going to happen with that object if somebody opens it in older version of Microsoft. Lets see an example.I inserted a Smart Art Graphic in a word document and this is what came as output.

Running Compatibility checker in word 2007

Error Message given by the checker with probable output.

This is a very important thing when you create an important document. You should always take care of the possibilities that a person might face. I have heard from so man people that the client yelled at them saying your word document is showing garbage and not the way it was supposed to be. Hope that helps.