Help With Issue - Preventing Formatting From Automatically Being Altered When Transitioning from .doc to .docx File

Question

Hello,

I have Microsoft Word .doc files that are formatted perfectly. When transitioning the .doc files to .docx the formatting automatically is being altered/changed and I have to spend time fixing the formatting over again. Is there any way to prevent this from happening?

Answer 1

Hi @Michael Wade

This can definitely happen when formatting from .doc to .docx file as .docx which stores the file in Open XML Document format. My best guess at your situation is that some of the formatting changes are being lost in translation.

There is no real way around this as I have seen this in the past with some of the documents I have updated.

One suggestion is that you could try an online .doc to .docx converter and see if there are any differences.

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Answer 2

Sorry, Word was not designed to have an identical appearance with all versions. You'll have to maintain files in their original format to maintain a particular look.

Answer 3

Hi, @Dillon Silzer
As DillonJS says, word can't solve this problem. One way to try is to use a file converter, which you can search for online to download.

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Answer 4

Sorry, but the online convertor idea makes no sense, as you would quickly find if you did any testing. The appearance of the document is created by the file format used, not the application that is doing the conversion. If the convertor is worth anything, it's going to exactly reproduce the file format that Word would create and the appearance will change.