PCinfospace

This is a very common problem.  This can also relate to trying to open a document that is sent to you over you office network or through a USB drive or CD or other media.

Here is an example: If you receive an e-mail with an attachment that you can’t open it is probably because you have an earlier version of the software program.  If you have Word 97 and the person that sent the document has Word 2007 you will not be able to open it.  Also, if you do not have the program at all you will not be able to open what somebody sent you.

What about PDF files?
There are quite a few PDF file being sent these days.  In fact a high percentage of all Company attachments are PDF format.  If you don’t have Adobe Reader or a version that is up to date you may not be able to read the PDF form sent to you.

In the past most people were not upgrading their computers or at least not their production packages such as Office.  With the introduction of Window XP many of the old programs were not compatible and people were forced to change.  When Vista came around this became more urgent than ever.  In XP most of the old programs would work in compatibility mode.  Not so in Vista.  Now Windows 7 is here. Prior programs may not work in this operating system either. This quickly weeded out old printers because manufactures did not make drivers that were compatible to older systems.  A wider range of people were buying laptop also.  These all came with the latest and greatest operating system only adding to the already complex problem.

Driver updates
The biggest problem when you change operating system is drivers for video cards, sound or even your network card may need to be updated and/or even totally changed.

Hardware issues
Periodically you may need to change your hardware because the manufacturer doesn’t make a driver or software compatible to the newer operating system.

How to fix this
You can ask the person that sent the document to send you a copy that is farther back or equal to the one you have. Most programs such as Word allow you to save it in an earlier version. This is a fix if you just don’t want to upgrade.  However, the number of times you have to do this may become unbearable.

Try to keep your computer up to date the best you can.  You will most likely be forced to buy the latest and greatest word processing program or other programs that will work with your system. Mostly it should be worth the upgrade.  The newer computers are much faster and have features that may help you in doing things better and maybe faster.