Question : Outlook won't open .pptx attachment directly

One of my users sent in a ticket with the issue below. I have not seen this behavior before. I tried making that user an admin on the computer by putting his domain account in the Local Administrators group, but that didn't make any difference. Note that the Compatibility Pack for Office 2007 is installed. We install that via GPO to all the computers. The OS is XPSP3 and it is Outlook 2003.

Thanks,
donander

On the new computer you put in our computer room, I am trying to
open a PowerPoint presentation someone sent me. But when I
double-click it, even though I see a dialog giving me a choice to Open
or Save it, when I click Open, I see a Save As dialog with .ppt as the
extension and the "Save as type:" field has only one choice and that is
"Microsoft Office PowerPoint 97-2003 Presentation (*.ppt)"

If I save it as that type it doesn't open in Outlook. If I go to where I saved it
and double-click it, it opens, but as a .ppt (not .pptx) file. If I click File > Save Attachments in the message and save it with .pptx extension, then go double-click it where I saved it, I get
the same Save As dialog. If I open PowerPoint first, I can use File > Open and open the .pptx version.

I looked in Add/Remove Programs and the "Compatibility Pack for the
Office 2007 System" is there.

Answer : Outlook won't open .pptx attachment directly

It is the same in other profiles. The file association points to the converter. I don't think I'd want to change that since the file would in fact need to be converted to open in PowerPoint 2003. It's just that it is being saved as .ppt instead of being automatically converted and opened.

In any case, I decided to just upgrade to Office 2007. We've been holding off on this because the interface is so different. Some users have complained bitterly when they have to use 2007, but I figured this would fix the problem and the users could use this box to get familiar.

How do you think I should handle the points? If you feel one of your comments could be interpreted as "just upgrade to 2007" I'm happy to award the points.

Thanks,
donander