I currently have Office 97. If documents (Word or Excel)are created in later versions of Office, will I be able to open them in Office 97?

According to Microsoft, you shouldn't have a problem reading files created with office 2000 or XP.

If you do have a problem (or even if you don't), I suggest you try Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org) which can read MS office files.

Hope this helps...
~psi42