Microsoft Office 2007 compatibility

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jobyna_oneal
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Microsoft Office 2007 compatibility

Post by jobyna_oneal »

When will OpenOffice3.0 be able to open Word 2007 documents and save to this file type? Word 2007 is the primary word processor in use and having to reformat documents over and over again is very inconvenient.
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thomasjk
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Re: MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007

Post by thomasjk »

V3 can open Office 2007 files now. It cannot however save in that format.
Tom K.
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jobyna_oneal
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Re: MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007

Post by jobyna_oneal »

Thank you to Tom for the prompt reply, however, when will we be able to save in Word 2007 format?
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thomasjk
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Re: MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007

Post by thomasjk »

I have no idea. I searched the wiki. This link offers some choices http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wik ... 7_files%3F. Microsoft will be releasing a filter for Office this year to read native OOo formats.
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Villeroy
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Re: MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007

Post by Villeroy »

jobyna_oneal wrote:Thank you to Tom for the prompt reply, however, when will we be able to save in Word 2007 format?
Hopefully never since this would help to spread another zombie format under the total control of Microsoft. http://blogs.eweek.com/brooks/content/o ... lking.html

You can send your documents in PDF format if they are not supposed to be edited by the receipient. PDF is the format which looks exactly the same on all systems. It does not even need an office suite installed. There are several free viewers for all platforms.

For collaboration with users of any version of Microsoft Office from 1997 to 2007 you can exchange documents in the old binary formats doc, xls, ppt without having to fear any drawback. If OOo would write OOXML it would encode the very same details in that format as it uses to encode in the old Microsoft formats and MS Office 2007 reads the old formats as well as MSO 2003 did.
The next service pack for MS Office 2007 will add ODF support. Meanwhile there is a plugin by Sun Microsystems to add ODF support to Microsoft Office applications: http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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jobyna_oneal
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Re: Microsoft Office 2007 compatibility

Post by jobyna_oneal »

To Villeroy -- thanks for your help.
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mercedglen
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Re: Microsoft Office 2007 compatibility

Post by mercedglen »

I just decided to try using open office now that it aqua compatible....I am having the same issues and problems that have actually been made worse at least as file formats are concerned....What I discovered was:

1) I cannot open an .XLS file from open office
2) If I convert the .XLS file to the .XLSX new format......I no longer can save it out as the same format
3) I work at college that has microsoft entrenched and I am a mac user..There are about 30 of us plus a biology lab based on the mac. This creates and environment that is difficult to work in as people are not going to fool around with converting exporting all the insane data manipulation that looks like will be required to make this work.
4) I went so far as to look at the plug-in from sun systems to covert open document formats...DOES NOT exist for Mac OS X
5) What this really looks like to me is another format war with the end user suffering.....

The only reason I was considering using open office was that the macos may still run for us...Microsoft stupidly removed VB from office 2008 so now we have another mess.....I really hope that someday that we have some formats that will remain the same and usable across multiple applications but just like promises of posix and C we are still in the dark ages when it comes to compatibility......
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Villeroy
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Re: Microsoft Office 2007 compatibility

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1) OOo is the second best program to load the proprietary xls format.
2) OOo loads Microsoft's new shit since version 3. If the file in question works better in OOXML, open the xlsx and then save as xls in OOo. The file should be slightly different, but still compatible with other applications. Others reported doc and xls documents that could be loaded into OOo, but stopped working with MS Office. Things like that happen with proprietary file formats and there is nothing to do about it.
3) You can run Windows XP with MS Office on Mac PCs.
4) http://zamzar.com just to mention one of several web-tools. A list of ODF-capable applications and a plug-in to make MS Office comply to the standards. Native ODF support is announced for the next service pack of MSO2007.
5) The ODF file format has been invented to stop all format wars in the office sector. MS struggled several years to establish their so called "Office Open XML" (notice the similarity in names!) as it's proprietary counter strike, since the binding between file format and application is what they earn their living with. See the linked article in my previous answer. Writing OOXML is stupid because it increases the count of OOXML documents, fueling Microsoft's format war which they have lost already.

ODF can be implemented without any legal issues and without too many technical issues. It's a well documented, published ISO-standard since 2005, free by any means of the word. If Sun or OOo dies, the format will remain and as long as zip-compression and ASCII-encoding are well known heritage, future generations will be able to read ODF documents.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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Hagar Delest
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Re: Microsoft Office 2007 compatibility

Post by Hagar Delest »

See also that thread and the end of it: Say NO to the new MS Office OOXML format as ISO standard.
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mercedglen
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Re: Microsoft Office 2007 compatibility

Post by mercedglen »

Yes, you can run XP on a mac, I do it everyday using parallels. I only do this because I have to administer other windows machines using Altirus. However, the school does not want to have every apple computer run two operating systems. This one of the ways the school wants to rid itself of the Mac OS which is far more stable than the windows counterpart.

The problem come right back to using proprietary formats as you pointed out and hopefully this will be resolved but it may be very painful for a lot of us that just want to use a computer system to get work done, not waste a lot of time figuring ways around the problem.....

I don't dislike microsoft, I think that excel is one of their best products that have developed after purchasing it from someone else. It just galls me that business related growth models are draining our economy instead of being directed to a sustainable venture with improvement. We have several thousand windows machines and we are not at this time going to move to vista because it is unstable not user friendly.....I just want to be able to support the mac users without being pitted against the windows folks.
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Villeroy
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Re: Microsoft Office 2007 compatibility

Post by Villeroy »

I wholeheartedly hate MS for their organized crime. They bought new board members who raised their hands for OOXML in dozends of international standardization boards and then those "partners" were never seen again, leaving some of the boards incapable of action for months.
OOXML has several severe design flaws. It describes Microsoft's past concepts of office documents rather than generic office documents. It may embed binary data in XML and they tried to declare some of their bugs as standard. What current MSO2007 generates as OOXML does not even comply to their own standard. The OOXML which has been acknowleged through bribery (but remains unpublished until now) is not the same OOXML they write into their new pestilence of a file format.
Use whatever software you like and store your work in whatever file format you find appropriate, but do not expect other software vendors to ride this dead horse. You have the current proprietary file format strictly bound to MSO 2007 and this is exactly why MS started the latest war on file formats. But this is not 1995 anymore ...
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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