Loading
-
Office Productivity Suite Gets ODF Support
Techtree News Staff, May 22, 2008 1514 hrs ISTOffice 2007 SP2 users will be able to open, edit, and save documents using ODF, and save documents to XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application.
After much dilly dallying, Microsoft has decided to add support for the Open Document Format to its Office Productivity Suite. With the release of Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) slated for sometime in the first half of 2009, the company will start supporting various formats including Open Document Format (ODF), Document Format (PDF), and XML Paper Specification (XPS).
This means, Office 2007 SP2 users will be able to open, edit, and save documents using ODF, and save documents to XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code. Users will be able to set ODF as the default file format for Office 2007. Presently, they need to download separate plug-ins for using ODF, and for PDF and XPS formats.
To be able to extend ODF support to users of earlier versions of Office XP and Office 2003, Microsoft will continue to collaborate with the open-source community on the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net, the company said.
While Microsoft may have declared support for the Open Document format, it already has approval for the Office Open XML (OOXML) file format as international standard from the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Electro-technical Commission (IEC).
Open XML is a platform-independent open standard for word-processing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets to help ensure that older files are readable even if the program used to create them changes significantly.
This means, Office 2007 SP2 users will be able to open, edit, and save documents using ODF, and save documents to XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code. Users will be able to set ODF as the default file format for Office 2007. Presently, they need to download separate plug-ins for using ODF, and for PDF and XPS formats.
To be able to extend ODF support to users of earlier versions of Office XP and Office 2003, Microsoft will continue to collaborate with the open-source community on the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net, the company said.
While Microsoft may have declared support for the Open Document format, it already has approval for the Office Open XML (OOXML) file format as international standard from the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Electro-technical Commission (IEC).
Open XML is a platform-independent open standard for word-processing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets to help ensure that older files are readable even if the program used to create them changes significantly.
Related Links
Opinion Poll
- Which desktop web browser do you use?
-
Internet Explorer
Firefox
Chrome
Safari
Opera
Other (specify in comments)
Poll Results View Previous Polls