Indian businessman are required to fill-in and submit their Value Added Tax (VAT) returns in a timely manner and state governments provide Microsoft Excel template to make the computation easier and automated. However, the excel form-template provided by Rajasthan state government for "VAT Form 7A" always resulted in a read-only error for "PERIOD TO" field when a user completes the "PERIOD FROM" field with correct date as shown below. This error prevents further data input impossible, the concerned authorities and helpline have no idea/solution about this. Thankfully, when my friend approached me with the issue I was able to fix this as shared ahead.

More then three years ago I blogged about "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats" allowing users to open newer Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 file-formats in older versions of office and received an DMCA take-down notice from Microsoft for directly linking to the file, I am not sure what pissed Microsoft off but one reason could be forcing users to upgrade when an alternative option is not known or easily available.

Thanks to Google Docs Viewer users can now view 12 new file-formats apart from existing PDF, Microsoft Word documents and PowerPoint presentations - the new supported formats are Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX, Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX), Apple Pages (.PAGES), Adobe Illustrator (.AI), Adobe Photoshop (.PSD), Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF), Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG), PostScript (.EPS, .PS), TrueType (.TTF)and XML Paper Specification (.XPS).

As more and more users are switching to the latest version of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007, users are facing trouble using these new formats in older versions of office but their's a solution provided by Microsoft as Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, installing this 28 Mb update will enable earlier versions of the Microsoft Office to open, edit and save files in the latest format of the software.

By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able to open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack.