Word Formatting Issues

[ashippen]

One of my friends opened an old document. When it opens, the Word document loads in compatibility mode. Unfortunately, it has major formatting issues. She has charts, tables, etc. The document will load and the information is correct, but it is misaligned or the information isn't in the correct location (close, but no cigar). She stated the document was saved in Excel. However, she is opening a Word document. She does have similarly named documents saved in Excel, but this particular document is saved in Word. It seems the document was save as in Word not Excel. Copying the document from Word and pasting it to Excel doesn't correct it.

What is the best solution? Can a document be converted from Word to Excel? What is the best way to open an older version of a Word document in Office 2013 so there are no issues between versions?

 

[Ranger4]

What version of Word was the document originally created in?.

 

[ashippen]

Microsoft Office 365. So it should be Word 2013. I believe it was saved in an .xls file format. I believe it might have been created in Office 2010, but not sure.

 

[Ranger4]

I use Office 2013 & Excel are saved as .xlxs file format, so perhaps it was saved in .xls file format to work with an earlier version of Excel or Word. .xls file formats were used from Excel 97 to Excel 2003. Excel 2007 to Excel 2013 use the .xlxs, so it looks like it may have been saved for a pre 2007 version.

This MS website provides that info.

https://support.office.com/en-AU/Ar...e-format-6a16c862-4a36-48f9-a300-c2ca0065286e

This website does mention that files saved in a different file format might suffer from formatting, details & data might not be saved.

Perhaps as a work around you could open a new Word document in Word 365/2013 & copy sections of the old document & paste them into the new one. It may be slow but if you do sections at a time you should be able to get it laid out as you want it.