Pages '08 opens Word 2007 documents

Unless I have overlooked something, Pages08 can't convert its own documents back to Pages06 format, so it is worse than Word.
Have I missed something?

does anyone know if you can open "pages 08" documents in microsoft office.

I am so p*ssed that the iWork/Pages application I just purchased and received cannot import or save .ODT (OpenOffice/NeoOffice) files!! WTF?

Pages does indeed support track changes from word documents, preserving them perfectly. This, combined with Numbers, is the death knell for MS Office on my machine (screen shots of Office 2008 look great, though).

Yes, but is it backward compatible with Pages 07 docs? I assume so, cos I've been waiting for the 08 version to finish a 160 page doc created in Pages 07, which crashes every time I touch it, and has been so sloooow to work on, it got unusable.

Just got off the phone with an Apple rep after 30 minutes of asking if Pages 08 supports ODF.

It does not.

Important to remember in all this discussion about OOXML being "Microsoft only" - Apple is a FOUNDING member of the OOXML coalition. In fact the first OOXML meeting was held on Apple's campus. OOXML is a open standard, regardless of what IBM would have you believe. The big winner should be Mac users, because we are much less likely to ever be left out in the dark again no matter which format a client/employer uses.

It's even more ironic that the people demanding that governments should mandate "ISO open standards" fail to note that the default Pages/Keynote formats are not ISO approved "open standards". This only serves to underscore that the format wars we see between ODF and OOXML are nothing more than marketing plays by the big vendors. Saying that one should be government mandated is like saying the government should mandate "Coke" and ban "Pepsi".

It's all very well iLife supporting the new MS2007 file formats, however until Apple actually makes Mail.app (or something better) completely compatible with MS Exchange server, then many of us business users will still need MS Office for Entourage. I tried Mail app with my 2Gig exchange mailbox and the poor thing nearly choked. Completely useless. If Apple can 1-up microsoft on the email front here, that would be the final nail in the coffin. Until then, iLife 08 is just a "nice to have", not an MS office killer.

Does Pages in iWork 08 open Open Document files?

I've seen no comment _anywhere_ on this. I can't test, because I haven't yet got iWork 08 myself.

I guess what people are mostly looking for is compatibility with Ms products, because that's what most of the world is using. However, it would be nice to know whether Pages can now handle ODT or not, since that's a format that could well become more prevalent in the future.

Heh. I am one of those people who has never fully converted to Apple's apps because I don't mind Office too much and it's more "compatible." Well now that Apple's own productivity apps are more Office-compatible than Office, maybe we won't need MS by the time January rolls around.

I'll be heading to my local Apple Store for iWork (and iLife) in the morning, and I'm looking forward to making the attempt to get Office out of my life (except Entourage, at this point).