Many people use MS Office 2007 now …and there are many other people who still use MS Office 2003.
The problem is MS Office 2007 uses a new kind of file format (docx, xlsx …)
So if you are using MS Office 2003 and someone sends you a file made by MS Office 2007, you will not able to open the file 🙁
The solution should be: an upgrade of MS Office 2003 to MS Office 2007. BUT, maybe your hardware cannot support MS Office 2007
Because of this problem Microsoft proposes this Compatibility Pack: File Converter.
It's a freeware pack from Microsoft 😉
Have fun