14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has silently updated the official download page of the Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file formats to state that the installer will be pulled next month.
The Office Compatibility Pack was developed to allow users running old Office versions open documents that were created with newer versions of the productivity suite, as Microsoft changed file formats with the release of Office 2007.
While the company was using DOC, XLS, and PPT for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, respectively, in Office 2003, the very next update introduced a file format update to DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX. To allow users still relying on older versions of the productivity suite up to Office 2013 to edit new documents, the software giant shipped this Office Compatibility Pack that adds support for the new file formats.
And now it turns out that Microsoft is ready to pull this pack entirely, though no official announcement was released. As Woody Leonhard notes, it will all take place in April, at which point the pack will no longer receive other updates and security patches.
Download the Office Compatibility Pack
Microsoft doesn’t offer any other specifics on this decision, and the download page only includes the generic information about the Compatibility Pack.
KB924074, which is the official documentation of the Office Compatibility Pack, doesn’t include any other details regarding the retirement date, but only the information that users need to open new file formats in earlier versions of Microsoft Office. The page was last updated on January 8, 2017.
Most likely, Microsoft’s decision is based on the fact that only a few customers are still running old versions of the Office productivity suite, and a compatibility pack to add support for the new file formats is no longer needed.
On the other hand, even if Microsoft plans to pull the installer completely, you can still download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack from Softpedia using this link even after the retirement date.