Open & Save files .docx (Word 2007 & 2010)

[peterroots]

Somewhere further up this thread the term 'defacto standard' was applied to MSO files - THAT is the problem MSO files currently conform to no standard because MS does not want interoperability. MS want people to spend money on MS products so they have made it as hard as possible for others to interact with users of their software. They won't use OOXML, that they forced through as an ISO standard, and they have failed to implement the most recent ODF standard. Thus users of other software like AOO and LO can't work with MSO using either OOXML or ODF. Just when others had got the reverse engineering of .doc .xls etc worked out MS dropped them for .docx etc.
Maybe this will change with the next version of MSO when they claim to finally implement OOXML and ODF1.2 but I bet they very soon 'enhance' either or both to loose compatibly with ISO standards again (or am I just cynical?)
This will only ever change if enough people use true open standards and MS is forced to join in or loose compatibility - currently their market share is large enough that they can force everyone else to try and conform to them, or give in and use their software (which if often the easiest option)

[ithinktfiam]

All MS document formats are the de facto standard for business documents.

This is the heart of the problem. Everybody think like that and this is precisely the problem.

...

But we have to revert 20 years of habits...

No, the heart of the problem is children who don't work in the real world don't understand the meaning of "standard." It's not something that freeware advocates declare it is by fiat. It's what's the standard usage. For word processing documents, regardless of your opinion of MS, that format is docx. It's what businesses use and what is expected when we deal with adult businesses.

Every year I take another look at OO and every year I end up not replacing Office exactly because I contract in the real world and have to deliver docx. it's what's expected and that's what keeps me from switching to OO.

[Hagar Delest]

the heart of the problem is children who don't work in the real world don't understand the meaning of "standard." It's not something that freeware advocates declare it is by fiat. It's what's the standard usage. For word processing documents, regardless of your opinion of MS, that format is docx. It's what businesses use and what is expected when we deal with adult businesses.

As long as businesses agree with the vendor lock-in policy, .docx will be used in businesses indeed. We are no children at all, we know that very well, that's why we advise people having troubles with .docx to keep working with MS Office.

And docx is not a standard at all. It's just the consequence of an almost monopoly. A standard is made to insure interoperability (a meter is the same length wherever in the world, whoever measures it). Proprietary formats are designed to prevent that to keep users locked-in.

I don't really understand MS position because I don't think that MS Word is really the main point (personally, I never send .docx but PDF; the .docx is in case someone else has to modify the file later). The only real component in MS Office is Excel (no idea about Access, it may be the other one). Excel is so much ahead of Calc that there is almost no comparison. I could not live at work without the charting capabilities of Excel and Calc would be a real showstopper.

[Villeroy]

It has been well stated earlier that no programme can do it all, however the more compatible a programme is with what is out there, the more likely it will be to win the battle of the survival of the fittest.

If MS would be 98% compatible with ODF it would have won this battle? Why didn't they start with ODF right from the start in 2005? They have all the resources. They would have had all support from the ODF community. No license fees, no issues. Because their product is more complex and powerful it can easily support all ODF features without adding too much to their products.
Instead they bribed their own standard through the ISO boards and named it "Office Open XML" impudently.
They have no interest in being compatible with any other product. It is fully intended that you need MS Office to produce MS Office files. If someother product can not render their files in the exact same ways this other software looks stupid which is the best marketing effect ever. This is not a race for more compatibility. It is a race against compatibility and of course they win. It is impossible to be compatible with a runaway target of this complexity. But being compatible with MS Office is not the reason why OpenOffice exists. It is the battle for a true open file format standard ODF now being undermined by OOXML.

[floris v]

There's a subtle difference between a standard and an industry standard (enforced by law). It's generally not in the interest of the industry to make their products compatible with the products of their competitors. But in many areas governments enforced industry standards to protect consumers against the more powerful manufacturers. They didn't do so for the software industry. At first the software industry only produced software for business use, and governments felt that they didn't have to support companies against the software industry, and by the time that software entered the consumer market the game was all but over. The cost of developing software from tile one is prohibitive, so developers would only do it for the platforms that were already most widely used, and people would choose a platform based on how much software was developed for it. So in just a few years almost all OSs were stamped out by MS DOS and the rest is history.
The software industry is about the only industry where the competitors can compete at the cost of their customers. They want to sell more copies or licenses of their products and they do that by making their product bad in terms of compatibility. If you make software that is fully compatible with other software, then the users of that other software don't have to buy your software - they can continue to use theirs, and if they need to share files with users of your software, they can rely on the compatibility of your software to get that to work. If your software is not compatible, those other users will have to get a copy of your software to be able to open the files they get from users of your software.
The software industry also makes money by forcing its customers to upgrade their software. You almost never have to upgrade power sockets or lamps, you generally buy a new vacuum cleaner when your present one dies, not because there's a new model and your present one isn't compatible with the current voltage on your power point. But you have to upgrade your office suite every few years, not because you need the new features but because you start getting files from people who entered business later than you and got a later version of that suite with a new file format that your version can't open. Or why would MS define a new file format for its office suite every few years but to force their customers to buy the new version?

[posaune]

For myself--I need .docx documents to upload to certain publishing sites.

I found this site that converts for me, free, online, no need to download anything. I just used it and so far, so good: http://www.online-convert.com/

[John_Ha]

See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in and save files as .odt.