Office Compatibility Mode

You might have noticed “[Compatibility Mode]” started appearing in the title bar of some of your Word and Excel files after the recent Office 2016 upgrade.  This means that the document that you have opened was created with an older version of Microsoft Office.  Compatibility Mode ensures that people using older versions of Office will still be able to edit the document and the document will also maintain its intended format.

Documents created with Office 2007 or Office 2010 will display “[Compatibility Mode]” in the title bar when opened with Office 2013 or 2016.  Documents created with Office 2013 and opened with the 2016 version will not open in Compatibility Mode.  This is because 2013 and 2016 are compatible. 

There really is no reason to convert your older documents to the 2016 format unless there is some new feature or formatting option you are dying to use.  Remember, if you do convert them, people using older versions of Office might not be able to edit some components and the formatting may not appear as intended. 

Follow these instructions to convert Word documents to the 2016 file format:

1. Open the Word document
2. Click File
3. Click the Info menu option at the left
4. Next to Compatibility Mode, click Convert
5. Click OK
6. Save the document

For Excel:

1. Open the Excel document
2. Click File
3. Click the Info menu option at the left
4. Next to Compatibility Mode, click Convert
5. Click OK
6. Click Yes to close and reopen the workbook