One of my daughters is a student in another city and writes:
"I'm having trouble opening some of the word & powerpoint files my teachers are posting online. They all seem to end in .docx or .ppsx (or .pptx or something like that). At any rate, they end in X and my computer doesn't like them... The IT people said I need some kind of document converter because apparently my teachers are using a newer version of Office.
Other folks have talked about the XML converter, but if I were in your shoes, I would take a different approach.
I would talk to the teachers. "Thank you for posting these files online, but you might not be aware of the fact that you are accidentally making files that not everyone can read.
You are using a brand-new version of Microsoft Office. You might not know this, but the new version of Microsoft Office creates files that other people can not use. You can change your settings in your version of Office in order to create files that everyone can use. The Office Help shows you step by step what settings to change. You only have to change the settings once and from then on your copy of Office will make files that everyone can read.
There's an easy way to tell. Look at the last letters of the files you are saving. If the last letter in the name of the file is X, Office is telling you that it is saving a file that not everyone can read."
