I'm reasoning here from my experience with Excel 2007, because I don't use Word 2007: "Compatibility Mode by default" may save you and your friends from doing anything different even after you have upgraded to Office 2007; the old DOC format will continue to be used when you save, if you are updating an old Word file that already has a DOC extension?
For example, when I opened one of my old Excel 2003 files in Excel 2007, "compatibility mode" showed before the file name on line one of the screen. Next, I made some changes to the file, and did Ctrl+s to save it; the file was saved with the old .xls extension rather than the available .xlsx extension. Smooth, huh?
There was one rough spot: I got a dialog box warning me (spuriously) that columns beyond 256 and rows beyond 65536 will not be saved. Microsoft should perhaps suppress that warning unless my file has such outliers.
I guess the conclusion is that you can upgrade now, but not use XML format until your friends gang up on you and tell you that you must. In my case, I don't feel that this format-readyness is a waste of money, because I like some of the other features, especially the fact that Excel 2007 is better at diagnosing circular references (which I seem to produce often).
I don't suppose this argument will change your stand-pat attitude; nor should it, unless Word 2007 has some great new features.
Arthur Hudson
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