File Attachments appear as .exe and cannot be opened in Outlook

[NavyPride09]

My company sends out Office 2007 docs as attachments to our client who runs
Office 2000. When she sends them, even if she saves them as Office 2003
docs-- they pop up in the clients inbox as .exe and they cannot be opened.

IF we send the docs from our system to a user with Office 2003, and then
that person saves the doc on the desktop and reattaches it in an email and
sends the doc(s) to the client-- then it works.

The client cannot update the computer without security approval and we don't
have that kind of time. Is there anything that we can do on our end to get
the documents from Pt A to Pt B with out using that middle person?

 

[K. Orland]

There is a hotfix/patch that Microsoft made available quite awhile ago that
converts documents/spreadsheets, etc. created in Office 2007 to be opened in
older versions (2002 and older). Apparently your recipient's PC is not fully
patched. Considering they are running quite an old version of Office, they
should apply the hotfix/patch in order to be able to open new Office
documents. This is going to occur frequently as many places of business move
forward with technology and software.

However your sender should be able to save the docs and spreadsheets in a
version that the older ones can see. The option should be in the drop down
box in the file type when the item is saved. It's not an issue specific to
Outlook but a compatibility problem between a current version of Office and a
pretty much obsolete version.

 

[dlw]

so, Office 2007 should be saving the files as .doc or .docx, right? At what
point are they changing to .exe? In sent items, what is the extension?

 

[NavyPride09]

Yeah the first thing we asked the sender to do was to send the file as a
2003 version. I noticed that there is an option for Save As Word 2003 XML...
would that help? I posted the question in Office too per you suggestion that
it doesn't have much to do with Outlook. I was equally surprised to hear
that anyone was still running 2000. *sigh*

 

[NavyPride09]

I just emailed the girl with your question to double check... I believe they
are still showing up as .docx even when she saves them as Word 97-2003.