Q. Are Office  2003  Editions file formats compatible with previous versions of Office programs? 
A. Yes. Since document formats in Office  2003  Editions are the same as those in Office XP, Office  2000 , and Office  97 , they are compatible with those versions.

Specifically:

• Binary File formats for Excel  2003 , PowerPoint  2003 , and Word  2003  remain the same and are compatible with previous versions dating to Office  97 .
 
• An Outlook Personal Folders file (.pst) can now be saved as a new binary format, which uses Unicode and increases the storage limit to approximately  20  gigabytes (GB). An Outlook  2003  .pst file is not compatible with previous versions of Outlook, but the old format is the default.
 
• Access  2003  has no change to the file format as previous versions, so you can open Access  2003  files in Microsoft Access version  2002 . Note  There is an Access  2000  file format, in addition to Access  2003  and Access  2002  file formats. The Access  2000  file format is the default, but users or administrators can change the default to Access  2003  or Access  2002  formats.