Someone sent me a .pptx file. Now
I need to open it.
Microsoft writes about this problem
in a general way here:
Open a PowerPoint 2007
presentation in an
earlier version of PowerPoint
Here's the simple solution. Download
Microsoft's PowerPoint Viewer 2007:
PowerPoint Viewer 2007
If you are reading this at some future
date when PowerPoint Viewer 2007
is obsolute, the principle will likely
remain the same. Microsoft will likely
have a viewer that you can download for
free.
Years ago, Adobe adopted this business
model with their Adobe Acrobat Reader.
The basic business model is to make users
pay for the creation of documents but to
allow them to view documents for free.
In order to view documents for free,
you need a free viewer. Therefore,
PowerPoint Viewer 2007 completes
the business model.
In general, you should expect to be able
to view any document that someone sends
you for free someway somehow. The trick
is figuring out how to do it.
Note that OpenOffice.org 3.0 also claims
to be able to open .pptx files in
their new feature list:
OpenOffice.org 3.0 New Features
Since OpenOffice.org is free, this should
be another way to open .pptx files
without having to buy anything.
The obvious advantages of OpenOffice.org
are twofold: It is free and it runs on
three different platforms: Linux, Mac,
and Windows.
Thus, OpenOffice.org is great for cross-platform
compatibility when sending and receiving documents.
OpenOffice.org strives for compatibility with the
most common file formats currently used in business
offices.
OpenOffice.org is compatible with both word processing
and spreadsheet documents. This makes OpenOffice.org
very useful!
You can download OpenOffice.org here:
Download OpenOffice.org
If you are only trying to view a single PowerPoint
presentation under Windows, OpenOffice.org may be
overklll. You may wish to go with PowerPoint
Viewer 2007 (above) for the sake of simplicity.
Ed Abbott
No comments:
Post a Comment