“Microsoft’s Office 2007 for Windows saves documents in a format that’s incompatible the company’s Mac Office application,” Macworld reports.
Macworld reports, “By default, Office 2007 saves documents in what the company calls ‘Microsoft Office Open XML.’ The new format applies across Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications on PCs using Office 2007. The formats are specifically termed: docx, xlsx and pptx.”
Microsoft’s “Mac Business Unit hasn’t yet delivered similar software for existing Mac installations of Office. It has promised to ship them, but hasn’t yet committed to a specific date for this.,” Macworld reports.
Full article here.
APC reports, “A spokesperson for the MBU reminded APC of its promise at WWDC that ‘free downloadable converters would be available’ following the release of Office 2007 for Windows, but was unable to tell us when. ‘Unfortunately it is still to early for us to say when the converters will be available,’ she said.”
“Of course, Office 2007 applications can save their documents in ‘backward compatible’ formats, but that be a pain for co-workers and Mac users alike,” APC reports.
“Perhaps the only good news to come out of the announcement is the reluctance of businesses to upgrade. According to some sources, businesses will wait up to two years to make the switch,” APC reports. “Perhaps Mac users will have the converters they need by then.”
Full article here.
I don’t see what all the excitement is about here. Mac Office is and has been outdated for a while now. Undoubtably, the soon-to-be released upgrade (Universal Binary) will support this new file format. So, don’t get your panties all up in a wad; this is just business as usual. Things changes, things improve, Microsoft builds upgrade incentives into their products. Next story.
For Carl Carlson… she is using to instead of too. I wish people would learn the difference between to, too, and two.
I work with Pages and it is truly one great application. Word processing and more became enjoyable again for me.
And I just looked at NeoOffice – wow it is looking good, very good. The screenshots make it look every bit a contender..
http://neowiki.sixthcrusade.com/index.php/NeoOffice_Screenshots
I think I might just be about to lose Excel and Powerpoint, the last two MS apps on my Mac. Woohooo!
Just last week I stopped using office for Mac, and moved to iWork 06. I now have zero apps from M$. Feels good
Microsoft is incompatible with humanity.
coolfactor,
Yeah, and now that Mac users have been conditioned to be the last to be considered (mostly by Adobe ironically), how could we possibly expect Office 2007 to be compatible with Office 2007 for Mac without waiting for a year or two. Oh well, what’s the difference, its just a year or two.
Personally I’m switching over to Mariner Software’s suite of office products for Mac. I think that’s the best thing to happen to word processing on the Mac since WriteNow (OS7+).
“…formats, but that be a pain for co-workers and Mac users alike,” APC reports.”
Best be proofin’ that shit mofo.
coolfactor –
Not so. While the overall docx format uses xml to organize the information, from my reading about the file format most of the actual critical info within the xml tags is encrypted to make it impossible for other companies to accurately read and display the data stored in the file. So while you may be able to get the text data out, everything else about the file’s organization is lost.
See Groklaw’s “THE MASSACHUSETTS ODF-MS XML TIMELINE/RESOURCE PAGE” for more information.
‘behind’ as in MS is behind the curve as always.
Seeing as how the Fortune 500 company I work for is still stuck on Office 2000, I don’t see this as being a problem for quite some time.
How contradictory- Microsoft Office Open XML???!
Starting with the word Microsoft, meaning it is already going to be proprietary, Office meaning it will be terrible, and then, how is it open exactly??
Come on guys. Get a grip.
Microsoft has been consistently criticised for using a closed source file format for Office. *Finally* they move to an open XML-based format, that anyone can parse. This is to celebrated. Clearly older products can’t read a new format – hardly a surprise. But the new Office can still save in the old (proprietary) formats that Mac::office and other applications can read, and of course future producys will be able to easily use the new *open* XML format.
I really wonder about the technical understanding of the readers of MDN sometimes…
scumbags
total scumbags
The problem is not them moving to a new format, but not doing it in a way that includes everyone equally. Why do some folks have to wait perhaps months just to use the new format? Release plugins simultaneous with this crap.
Unfortunately this is nothing new from M$ (or any other company for that matter). MS just seems to be the primary offender (it is part of their business model.)
However, as has been said, many of us depend on MS Office. I for one have tried NeoOffice (NO) and OpenOffice (OOO) and neither one of them are suitable. NeoOffice being based upon Java is just painfully slow and clunky and OpenOffice is too Windows 95’ish for my tastes. I have to be able to 100% interact with .doc’s I receive from associates and clients. There is no other option. While I fully understand that NO and OOO are free, I don’t mind paying for quality software, provided it works and stays current. M$ fails at the former and NO and OOO fail at the latter.
MS docx format is supposed to be open XML based, well the jury is still out on that one. I for one, as will many others (and not just Mac users), will be telling .docx (Office 2007) users to reformat there documents as “no one here in the office can open them.”
zac
The world needs to use ODF – the open source file format that is completely open and approved as a standard. This would eliminate the need for proprietary file formats and would allow any application to use them including text editors and other word processors on any platform. Certain implementations may or may not have support for all the stuff in there, but they can just ignore it and implement whatever subset they know.
For the short term, just use Parallels with an XP partition. For the long run, Microsoft is screwing itself. When the Mac market share gets well into the double digits, Open Source word processors — really Open Source — will be able to take a nice chunk of the market.
If Apple cooperates with the Open Source community — and they already do — Apple would be compatible with the data formats used by many companies governments and institutions world wide which detest Microsoft lock in. Microsoft may just be locking itself out.
As a followup:
Most content we have produced for email over the last several years has been going out in PDF format. Have yet to get anything kicked back as unreadable.
MacOS X since Jaguar has had PDF file translation built in. It is truly convenient and many Windows colleagues and clients who have seen it in action (how truly easy it is to do) are amazed.
zac
“xlsx and pptx”
I will be naming formats from now on.
I want to see countermoves to M$. If other formats, open source, for instance, are given equal billijng by other companies, they’ll force M$’s hand to comply, too. It all depends on whether many people are going to upgrade Office. Frankly, I don’t see why they would. It does too much already.
I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft to pull a stunt like this just so they can blame Apple for the problem. We have already established that the average home computer user has the IQ of a stuffed pillow, so this strategy could work fairly well.
For fucks sake guys, do any of you actually know what an XML file is ????????
Your answer is simple, run Office 2007 under Parallels or Boot Camp.
Or if you can live without Office, stop using it.
But whatever way, stop Whining, You buy into being behind in product releases when you get a Mac. Why should this be a suprise to you?
I’m with Reality Check on this one…
From the Macworld article: “Novell has promised it will release code that supports the new Office 2007 formats to the open source developers of its alternative (and free) productivity suite, OpenOffice.org. This support is scheduled to debut “by the end of January”. Novell will also release translation software to help documents created in either suite to be opened in the other.”
How can they do this? Because it *is* open.
Basically, the Open XML format is all about saving documents in a web-friendly format as opposed to a proprietary one. It’s called *progress*. The MBU will have this fixed soon. Next…
@Macaday
“I think I might just be about to lose Excel and Powerpoint, the last two MS apps on my Mac. Woohooo!”
Keynote is already far superior to, and compatible with Powerpoint, so you can lose it NOW!
Hang on a sec….
I remember reading something about this a few months back and someone mentioned that these were XML files that were basically zipped.
Could someone with access to an Office 2007 file try unzipping it and see what happens? If this puts it into a format that Office for Mac can read, then I’m sure a quick hack could be written by someone to automagically convert these to a useable format.
Of course, if it really is this easy, it makes no sense that MBU wouldn’t alreay have converters in place unless the WANTED to make us wait….