Filed under: Software
Microsoft releases Word 2007 '.docx' file converter
If you've been gnashing your teeth as more and more Office 2007 files come your way from your innocent, early-adopter Windows colleagues and friends, time to quit your gnashing. Microsoft's beta of the mellifluously named Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac can now be downloaded from the big M's website. This initial version of the standalone converter tool supports Word 2007 files and is one-way: the resulting RTF output can be resaved as Office 2004 .doc files, but not as Office 2007 .docx files. Support for the newfangled PowerPoint and Excel document formats will be coming later this summer.As previously noted, the final integrated format conversion bundle that will live inside Office 2004 will not ship until after Mac Office 2008 hits the street. So it goes.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
amoeba said 3:50PM on 5-15-2007
and the obvious question:
why would anything 'open' need to be 'converted'?
what part of xml wasn't extensible enough for MS?
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CJV said 4:01PM on 5-15-2007
Does anyone know if a user will be able to choose *save as .doc* from the menu of formats in Office 2008?
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Alan said 4:03PM on 5-15-2007
Or...
You could use NeoOffice, the first office suite for the Mac to support the new Microsoft Office XML formats (not to mention ODF)!
http://neooffice.org
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Mat Lu said 4:45PM on 5-15-2007
Awesome, I needed this three days ago!
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Aron Trimble said 4:50PM on 5-15-2007
Alternatively TextEdit will open docx files.
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Nadyne Mielke said 5:19PM on 5-15-2007
@CJV - Yes, it will.
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Old Powermac said 7:52PM on 5-15-2007
This is the first good Microsoft icon I've seen.
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John P. said 9:58PM on 5-15-2007
@amoeba -
This tool converts from MS's docx (XML) word documents to the proprietary doc format. The reason for this, is if you have people who:
1) do not want to upgrade to get the docx functionality
2) people waiting for Office 2008 mac
then they may get files from colleagues that are in docx format.
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matthew_treder said 10:53PM on 5-15-2007
It occurs to me that this is similar to the growing pains users of InDesign suffered through when it was upgraded to a new text engine with the CS release. Compatibility was a real headache. It seems now that it was necessary medicine, producing a far cleaner and more XML-compliant environment than Word has been until now.
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matthew_treder said 11:27PM on 5-15-2007
John P. is correct. The conversion is to the older, proprietary (and definitely not XML-compliant) .doc format. It says something about how garbled the .doc standard had become that Microsoft itself—the author of the standard—could not produce a functional converter for it until today.
In the future, Word documents will be, or should we say, better be much easier to import and export from other applications. The near-term effect will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
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Klemens said 4:03AM on 5-16-2007
This icon reminds me of a silver shuffle.
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rabbitofdeath said 8:40AM on 5-16-2007
@ 8 and 10: Actually if you read the blog post it doesn't go back to .doc, it produces a rich text document. Thanks.
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admin said 10:21PM on 6-01-2007
Folks...forget this download stuff.
convert for free docx file online at www.docx-converter.com
Save it, share it, convert it...enjoy..
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Justin said 2:43PM on 6-09-2007
You dildo. That URL is garbage. Screw you and screw Microsoft.
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