Changing the Default Document Format

Normally, Word saves your documents in what is known as "Word format." In Word 2007 and Word 2010 that means that the documents are stored in a format based on XML. This format may not be easily understood by other versions of Word, nor by other programs.

If you do a lot of work creating documents for other versions of Word or other programs, you may want to specify a different default file format for your documents. Word makes this easy by following these steps:

- Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)

- Click the Save option at the left side of the dialog box. (See Figure 1.)