I had a problem with Office starter on my win7 pc & after much exasperation 
over the last 3wks I have decided to try an install of my old version of Office 2003.
It is working for new docs but I was thinking the existing word docs would just open in the newly installed version. But Office 2010 still wants control. Also there seems to be no conversion possible. I attempted a conversion & just a page with a few characters on it. Does this mean Word 2003 can't read the Word Starter 2010 documents? 
Will I have to uninstall all the Office 2010 suite first to get proper use of my word docs again? I need to be sure 2003 can read the 2010 docs first.
Same will apply to excel.
Documents saved by Office 2010 in .docx format cannot be opened by Office 2003. Office 2010 saves in the .docx format by default, Office 2003 saves in .doc format by default.
The way around this is to install the Office Compatibility pack: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3
Once you've installed the Compatibility pack your Office 2003 will be able to open all Office docs up to and including 2010.
Hi Jim, I did try for the compatibility pack but it couldn't load.
reason being there have been some bad updates that have been failing daily for about 4wks. Nothing seems to fix them. 1 is for Office & 1 is for .NET I've gone through all the Fit It things, done uninstalls & reinstalls, restores. I've even been told my pc doesn't need the .NET framework but I have programs that need it that I use daily.
I've spent days on this to no avail. So I tried a way around it by using Office 2003.
So I'm back to scratch. What I really want is the Office Starter back again.
I have a recent image but it was taken right about the time the failed updates appeared & blocked my Office Starter program.
Can I use the repair disc to get Starter back again? The only problem with Office Starter now is that I need to find a licence somehow. I'm not sure what Microsoft is wanting when it asks for the name & licence.
No, you can't use the repair disc to fix Office Starter. A repair will only look for and fix corrupted system files, Office Starter is not part of the system, it is has been installed afterwards.
Have you tried uninstalling the bad updates??
You may need to ring Microsoft Support, or start a support ticket. Considering the dramas the MS updates have caused, I'm pretty sure they would bend over backwards to help out.
Cheers... Jim
There's been some promising developments since I installed & used my spare Office 2003 licence.
I tried to open a word doc made with 2010 starter using word 2003 & got a message telling me to get the compatibility files etc. When I went there it told me to get all the important updates first. When I looked in my updates folder there were 49 new updates since last night. Obviously they'd all been talking to each other!
So I spent the day getting hours of updates & new stuff to allow word 2003 to open docs made with starter 2010. So that's all working now. So is PowerPoint.
However excel 2003 isn't working nor can I find it anywhere to link to it. So I wonder if I now need to go through the same process to get it updated? Currently I'm using Libre to open excel docs made on starter 2010 but there's always an argument with Office 2010 wanting control.
So I think I'll uninstall all of Office 2010 to let Office 2003 run. And I'll look in the Windows download page to see if there are updates & compatibility files for excel 2003.
The other thing bugging me was the failed updates. They have stopped coming in. It turned out to be an update for Office 2010.
OK it seems I have pretty much solved my problem maybe not exactly how I wanted but at least I have functioning Office & no failed updates bugging me anymore. I'll just have to loose starter 2010 but not to worry.
All that has to be good! 
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