Thursday, March 18, 2010

How to convert Bulk Office 2003 files to Office 2007 format

Hello, my friends. Today what I am going to tell you is a very good tweak. Most of us are using MS office 2007 and facing this issue that files with Office version 2003 takes too much time to be converted in office 2007 format. But when Faizu Baba is here do not fear. The solution is Migration Manager. It is a free tool from Microsoft that was designed for administrators to work with Office 2007 files. However, anyone can use it as it is quite handy in use but if someone follow the directions below. There are some commands you have to type into the command prompt.
First download the Migration Manager tool and extract it to a folder on your hard drive, i.e. C:\Convert. Next download and install the Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Now go to the C:\Convert\Tools directory and open the ofc.ini file in Notepad.


Find the path below in the INI file:

fldr=C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents


Now replace the current path in the file with your desired path and also remove the semi colon sign ";" written before the path. Actually this path that you enter above will be the path that the program will look into for all of the files you want to convert to Office 2007. You can also enter a server share if you have documents stored on the network:

fldr=\\server\share\docs

By default, the program will go through the directory and all sub-directories and convert all Word files (doc to docx), Excel files (xls to xlsx), Powerpoint files (ppt to pptx), Access databases, MS Project files, and Visio diagrams.

In order to run the program, you have to open the command prompt, Start – Run – type in CMD, and navigate to c:\convert\tools\. You can do this by typing in CD C:\convert\tools or whatever your path is.
Now type in the command ofc.exe and press Enter. The program will automatically begin converting the old Office XP and 2003 files to Office 2007 and give you a summary report at the end.
If you have other documents in the folders that are already in Office 2007 format or that are PDF’s, etc, don’t worry, the program will just skip over that files and not convert it. The path where your converted files are now as follows
C:\Documents and Settings\User name\Converted\ORIGINAL_PATH_NAME
User name = Your current user name under which this activity is perfomed
ORIGINAL_PATH_NAME= The folder name on which you have run this utility

Note that your original files are not touched or modified in any way, so you can rest assured that your files will not be damaged or lost in the conversion process. Overall, it’s a simple and fast way to convert many Word 2003, Excel 2003 and Powerpoint 2003 files to Office 2007 format. Enjoy!

Downloads required for this conversion
Migration Manager
Office Compatibility Pack