Skip to Content

Microsoft releases Word 2007 '.docx' file converter

by Michael Rose May 15th 2007 at 3:05PM

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.

View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

Software

If you've been gnashing your teeth as more and more Office 2007 files come your way from your innocent, early-adopter Windows colleagues...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

14 Comments

Filter by:
Justin

You dildo. That URL is garbage. Screw you and screw Microsoft.

June 09 2007 at 2:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
admin

Folks...forget this download stuff.

convert for free docx file online at www.docx-converter.com

Save it, share it, convert it...enjoy..

June 01 2007 at 10:21 PM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down Reply
Eric Kiel

@ 8 and 10: Actually if you read the blog post it doesn't go back to .doc, it produces a rich text document. Thanks.

May 16 2007 at 8:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Klemens

This icon reminds me of a silver shuffle.

May 16 2007 at 4:01 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
matthew_treder

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.

May 15 2007 at 11:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
matthew_treder

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.

May 15 2007 at 10:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John

@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.

May 15 2007 at 9:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Old Powermac

This is the first good Microsoft icon I've seen.

May 15 2007 at 7:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Nadyne Mielke

@CJV - Yes, it will.

May 15 2007 at 5:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
aron t

Alternatively TextEdit will open docx files.

May 15 2007 at 4:50 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.