How to disable conversion message when opening Office 2007 doc using Office 2003?

Question

I am working on a C# application which opens Excel workbooks using Interop. It works fine except for one annoyance: when opening an Excel 2007 document on a machine using Excel 2003, a small message pops up saying "File conversion in progress". Does anyone know of a way to prevent that message from appearing at all?

Answer 1

This is the message that the Office 2007 Compatibility pack throws up to tell you that the component is down converting the file into something that Excel 2003 can understand.

AFAIK, this particular message is not possible to suppress.

I had some problems with a relinking app that I wrote and ended up putting in some sleep calls. Im sure you have already experimented with the XL apps Visible, usercontrol and screenupdating properties. If so I can't think of much else I'm afraid.

There is a registry key that you can control for the compatibility pack which turns of file conversion for certain file formats Office 2003 users, thus suppressing the error, but that kinda defeats the purpose doesn't it? Personally i'd consider only targetting Office 2007 for new file types if that is an option for you.