2007 Office version reads old documents in compatibility mode

[Geojeff]

Have recently upgraded computer using Vista and Office 2007. Old documents
will only open in compatibility mode; ie read-only. How do I change this?
Also Outlook has stopped allowing full access to commands and now greys out
popular commands eg new, reply, forward etc?

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Those are 3 separate things you are mentioning here;

-old formats (doc, xls, ppt, etc...) are always opened in compatibility mode
by their respective application. This has nothing to do with Outlook by the
way.

-documents are opened in Read Only mode when you open them directly from the
Reading Pane. To open them in read/write mode, open the message first by
double clicking on it and then open the attachment.

-When those commands are grayed out, it usually means that you haven't
activated your version of Office yet. You are probably also no longer able
to create new documents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.