Depending on how you do it, you'll be faced with one of two different dialog boxes asking you if you're sure you want to. In one, you should click Yes to confirm a save in the old format. In another, you should click No to prevent conversion to the new format. Office 98 may not have much code directly ported from Windows, but many of its ideas still are. Microsoft is one of the largest software developers for the Mac.
People make a big deal out of that.
Office 98, Internet Explorer, and Outlook Express. Oh, and the Windows Media Player for Macintosh, and an instant messaging client. Plus outdated versions of Visual FoxPro, FrontPage, and Encarta, and a few kids' games. The Access database application, which is part of versions of Office for Windows and is the lingua franca of in-house database development for many businesses, has never been made for the Mac. Nor has its programming counterpart, Visual Basic.