Microsoft expands Office interoperability

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Microsoft expands Office interoperability

23 May 2008

Microsoft is underlining its commitment to real-world interoperability by expanding the range of document formats supported by Office.

The 2007 Microsoft Office system already provides support for 20 different document formats within Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint. With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, the list will grow to include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1.

The company will continue to collaborate with the open source community in the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net, in order to provide ODF support for users of Office XP and Office 2003.

In addition, Microsoft has defined a road map for its implementation of the newly ratified international standard ISO/IEC 29500 (Office Open XML), which was approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in March. The standard is already substantially supported in Office 2007, and this support will be updated in the next major version release of Office.

The company is also committed to providing Office customers with the ability to open, edit and save documents in the Chinese national document file format standard, Uniform Office Format (UOF),

“By increasing the openness of our products and participating actively in the development and maintenance of document format standards, we believe we can help create opportunities for developers and competitors, including members of the open source communities, to innovate and deliver new value for customers,” said Chris Capossela, senior vice president for the Microsoft Business Division.

“The demand for a document format that everyone can use is something I hear from our customers on a regular basis,” said John D. Head, framework manager at information-technology and professional services consulting firm PSC Group. “I am very pleased that Microsoft is enabling Office to support ODF directly from the software. This will allow us to develop solutions which create documents that can be edited by any user, regardless of what software or operating system they use. In a world where software companies want people to select one software package for their entire user base, the reality is that different user groups and types need options. Microsoft is now enabling users to make that choice. This is a very smart move by Microsoft, and one that lets the most important person — the customer — be the winner.”

“Microsoft’s support for ODF in Office is a great step that enables customers to work with the document format that best meets their needs, and it enables interoperability in the marketplace,” said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell. “Novell is proud to be an industry leader in cross-platform document interoperability through our work in the Document Interoperability Initiative, the Interop Vendor Alliance and with our direct collaboration with Microsoft in our Interoperability Lab. We look forward to continuing this work for the benefit of customers across the IT spectrum."