Use this trick to open a CS3 file in CS2 (InDesign CS2/CS3)

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Not everyone upgrades software at each new release. Unfortunately, one of the bigger headaches with InDesign files is the incompatibility issues that arise from this discrepancy. While newer versions of InDesign have worked fairly seamlessly at opening up earlier-version documents, older versions can’t open up the newer-version files.

With good reason: The newer software has updated features that the older version doesn’t know how to translate.

You can rest easy with this upgrade, however, because you can open a CS3 file in CS2. To do this, open your InDesign CS3 file and choose File > Export, select InDesign Interchange from the format pop-up menu, and click Save. Now, a user with CS2 can open the resulting .inx file in CS2.

There are two caveats, however:

Any CS3 features that don't exist in CS2 (such as table styles) won't carry over.
Only the latest version of CS2 can open CS3 files. Make sure your version of CS2 is up-to-date.

Note: When you have both CS2 and CS3 on your system, the file icons always display as CS3 -- even if they’re CS2 files. Therefore, it’s best to launch the InDesign version you want to use and then open the file from within the application. If you double-click on the file to launch InDesign, you may unwittingly open a CS2 file in CS3.

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