It has come to my attention that occasionally when Office 2007 documents are uploaded for attachment in Blackboard that they are being converted into zip files which becomes unusable to anyone else trying to access it. This issue is not seem to be a Blackboard problem but an Office 2007 document. The problems seem to be somewhat random and solutions are less than clear. After some research on the web here are a couple of suggestions -
- The quickest and simplest solution is to save the material in the 97 - 2003 option that is available in all of the Office 2007 programs. This is the BB supported solution.
- Some folks are zipping the files before uploading them to BB
- Some are suggesting downloading the files and renaming them with the original file extensions.
- Some are also suggesting that it is an issue of not having a compatibility pack from Microsoft. This however is less likely
In the meantime there are other file formats that can be uploaded to BB without a problem. As stated above you can save as the 97 - 2003 version in any Office 2007 application, RTF (Rich Text Format), and PDF files will load for you just fine and download for your students in the proper way. Rich Text is a sort of the universal word process file that any one can open. PDF are also widely recognized file format that needs the Adode Reader to open it; this reader is common on most computers. If you are using Office 2007 you can create a PDF version of your documents within the applications by downloading and installing a plug in from Microsoft. PDF's can also be created at the following website:
NANC
