Microsoft Mac BU: Office 2007 file converters for Mac OS X due in Spring '07; new Mac Office will natively read new formats
The Microsoft Mac BU has just posted a message to its "Mac Mojo" blog providing an update on the status of file conversion utilities that will allow Office 2007 (Windows) documents to be opened under Mac OS X versions of Office. Office 2007 for Windows uses a new file format that is not backwards compatible. Compatibility packs for Office 2003 and other Windows releases are already available.
The post reads:
"We're working on our file format converters as I write. We had to wait until Office 2007 bits and the new file format itself were locked down. During this time, we spent the last year and a half prepping and planning for our own development of file format converters for Office for Mac. This included the basic supporting work of a rich and compatible XML parser, code to understand the new package structure, and beginning work on reading and writing early development versions of the file format.
"So now that Office for Windows has been released, we are working on completing compatibility with the released formats, while also completing other major work such as moving our codebase to the Intel platform, which we have discussed at some length on this very blog and elsewhere. We are running on target and expect to release a free public beta version of the file format converters in Spring 2007, with final converters available six to eight weeks after we launch our next version of Office for Mac (which, as previously reported, will be available 6-8 months after general availability of Win Office.) The next version of Office for Mac will natively read the Open XML Format; users of the current version of Office will have converters in order to maintain compatibility with the new Office for Windows."
The company also offers some recommendations on what to do in the interim:
"There will be a delta between general availability of Win Office (January) and converters from MacBU (expected late March/early April.) We realize this will be an inconvenience for some of you (trust me, we know - 90% of Microsoft has been dogfooding Office 2007 for many months, and we in the MacBU are well used to asking for down-revved versions ourselves). For now, we recommend that Mac users advise their friends and colleagues using Office 2007 to save their documents as a 'Word/Excel/PowerPoint 97-2003 Document' (.doc, .xls, .ppt) to ensure the documents can be shared across platforms."
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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I guess I don't understand MS, but what is the basic purpose of their changing the supposed worldwide de facto "standard"? Just because they can, to make more money, or is their a good functional reason?
Windows users are clueless, and Microsoft continues to enable them.
Will NeoOffice and the other open source alternatives be able to read this new format or will they also have to wait on the converters from MS Mac BU?
In my experience with thousands of Mac users, most of them are no less clueless than Windows users. But maybe the real cluelessness lies with Microsoft, having what seems to me to be a pointless delay between the release of Office 2007, and converters for it for older versions of Office for all operating systems.
A two-month delay isn't the end of the world. Considering that the Windows Office team and the MacBU are very different groups, I think for the MacBU it is a bit like waiting for a different company to release their final version before you can really start work on writing rock-solid software that uses the "other company's" files.
Perhaps Microsoft as a company "should" take Mac users into consideration when releasing a major revision like this, but in the real world, for Microsoft, Mac users are an afterthought.
Every time they do this they force everyone to upgrade to the new version while most people haven't used the features of the old one!
Historically, your complaint is correct but this time it's a bit different. The new XML based format is much more accessible and understandable to third parties as well as to Microsoft themselves. If you have to deal with support of large numbers of MS Office users on different versions you find that there are lots of little bugs in compatibility between them. The existing file formats are really difficult to troubleshoot from a programmers perspective and the introduction of XML makes that much easier. Microsoft is doing this as much to improve their own internal support of Office as anything else but third parties benefit as well. These third parties are not just developers of competing products like OpenOffice and iWork but also developers of related software like customized solutions which output Word or Excel files directly from a database, for example.
- by fmlogue December 12, 2006 8:52 AM PST
- Coupling this announcement with the anouncement of dropping Visual Basic from the Mac version of Office 2007, it is obvious that Microsoft is getting out of the business of software for the Mac platform. With the ability of Macs to run Windoze on the Mactels, Microsoft is in a win-win situation, They can save money by closing down their Mac business unit while maintaining that they are not leaving Mac users in the lurch as we can run Windoze Office on our new Macs, thus continuing to sell Office to Mac users and not lose any business, but now they can sell more Windoze operating systems to us. What a brilliant business strategy. Of course not being in the business of making computers, they don't care who makes the computers their operating system runs on, and they certainly don't care that they are forcing all those businesses, educational institutions and personal computer owners to buy new computers in order just to be able to trade documents with PC users. And, I guess, Apple can't be too sad that Microsoft is helping them sell new computers! And we were worried about games not being developed any more for the Mac.
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