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2006-11-20
Microsoft has released several new tools for their new MSOfficeXML file formats that are included in MSOffice 2007.
The Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats lets users of MSOffice XP and MSOffice 2003 ppen, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the new MSOfficeXML file formats.
The Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM) is a collection of tools to prepare for migration to the MSOffice 2007. It includes the Office File Converter (OFC) that allows bulk conversion of specific files to the new MSOfficeXML file formats.
One telling quote in the OMPM description is:
For the most part, documents created in Office 2003 and earlier open and behave the same way in the 2007 Office release. However, there might be instances where files require manual intervention or analysis to ensure consistent behavior. For example, a custom solution built in Microsoft Excel 2003 might require modification because it relies on older Office features that are no longer supported in Excel 2007.
This really drives home how little you can trust Brian Jones and Microsoft. Brian has been continually denigrating OpenDocument and saying how important backward compatibility is, but then they are not backwards compatible either.
It seems more like Microsoft will keep it as much as possible to make things difficult for comptitors, but when the going gets rough, they are perfectly willing to force changes on their customers.
File Formats: MSOfficeXML