Upgrading Reference for Localized Versions of Office

Sharing Word Documents Across Language Versions

Just as with nonlocalized versions of Microsoft Word, localized Word 97 can open and read Word 2000 documents directly, but localized Word 95 or Word 6.0 must have the Word 97-2000 converter installed, or the Word 2000 documents must be saved in Rich Text Format (RTF).

RTF allows you to exchange multilingual documents between Microsoft Office versions. In Office 2000, RTF supports Unicode and it also allows Word 95 and Word 6.0 to use all Unicode characters that occur in single-byte code pages. As long as the Word 95 or Word 6.0 user does not save the file, the Unicode is preserved when the RTF file is reopened in Word 2000.

Users of Word 2000 and previous localized versions can share documents as follows:

• In Word 2000, you can open and edit any document created in a previous localized version of Word, regardless of the language, provided the operating system supports the language of the file.
• In localized Word 97, you can open and edit Word 2000 documents, regardless of the language, provided the operating system supports the language of the file.
• In localized Word 95 and Word 6.0, in addition to an operating system that supports the language of the file, you need the following to open Word 2000 documents:

  You must have the Word 97-2000 converter installed.

  – or –

  The file must be in RTF.

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Opening documents from previous localized versions in Word 2000

When you open Word 95 or 6.0 documents in Word 2000, Word 2000 converts the text to Unicode. Because Word 2000 and Word 97 both support Unicode, Word 2000 does not need to convert Word 97 text.

Word 2000 can display English and European-language text in documents from any language version of Word 97, Word 95, and Word 6.0. If Word 2000 users have enabled the appropriate language, Word 2000 can display text in any language provided the operating system supports the language of the file.

For all languages except French, German, and Spanish, Word 2000 field codes such as Author, Date, and Time are stored in English. When a localized version of Word 95 or Word 6.0 document is opened in Word 2000, the document’s field names are translated to English so that English versions of Word 2000 can use the fields.

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Opening Word 2000 documents in localized Word 97

Word 97 can directly open and read Word 2000 documents. However, to display Asian or right-to-left (Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, or Urdu) text that doesn’t match the language version of Word 97, you must have the appropriate language support installed on your system.

For Asian text, you can install the Office 97 Asian support files, but for right-to-left text, you must use a compatible right-to-left language version of Word 97.

Localized versions of Word 97 can display Word 2000 text as shown in the following table.

Note   Layout for the Asian text in Word 97 might be different than it is in Word 2000.

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Opening Word 2000 documents in localized Word 95 and Word 6.0

Depending on the language, Word 95 and Word 6.0 can open and read Word 2000 documents by using the Word 97-2000 converter, or Word 95 and Word 6.0 can open and read Word 2000 documents that are saved in RTF.

Localized versions of Word 95 and Word 6.0 can display Word 2000 text as shown in the following table.

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Running macros from previous localized versions of Word

When Word 2000 opens older localized documents, it converts WordBasic to Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and translates the commands to English. Converted macros use the form WordBasic.xxx. However, strings — including user-created strings and WordBasic strings — are not translated. If a command is a WordBasic command, the language of the arguments accepted by that command can be either English or the localized language.

In Word 2000 and Word 97, you can write macros that work in all language versions of Word 2000 and Word 97. Be sure to use enumerations in your VBA code, and do not refer to objects by the names used in the user interface, because these names are different in each language version.

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See also

If your organization is upgrading from a previous version of Word, there are several strategies for making a smooth transition, beyond cross-language considerations. For more information, see Upgrading to Word 2000.

The Unicode standard provides unique character values for every language that Office supports and makes it even easier to share multilingual documents. For more information, see Sharing Multilingual Documents.

For some languages, you need to have an operating system and fonts that allow you to display and edit the text. For more information, see Configuring Users' Computers in an International Environment.