Office 97 and Office 2000 compatibility

2000 can read and save documents in O97 format.
Access is the only app. that has a problem and that can be surmounted

It also works vice versa. You can open and read all Office 2000 applications (with the exception of some Access 2000 Databases) in Office 97.

Access is the only program in Office that changed formats. You should have no problems creating or working on a document in Word 97 and opening in Word XP.

There are slight differences, however. For example, WinXP handles colors differently, so if you have a desktop with Win and Office XP, and you specify a bunch of colors, they may not appear the same on a computer with Win95 and Office 97. In this case saving in Office 97 will cause the colors to retain their attributes from 97 even when opened in XP

Just to add to the other responses:
--Word tables in 2000 can be imbedded inside other tables. If you do this, and save to 97, it is not pretty. Go to Tools-Options, Save tab and choose the box that says something about not using anything that isn't supported in 97. I think you'll lose vertical centering in table cells too, but that's about all.
--You can have some users in Access 2000, but they will not be able to change the design of 97 databases until the DBs are converted to 2000. THEN, 97 users won't even be able to open it.
--If you use VBA in your applications, you may run into some issues, but should be okay for the most part.

This question was closed by the author