Office 2008 update delays Open XML converter

Stephen Withers
Friday, 22 February 2008 07:29

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft is pressing ahead with an updater to fix "high-priority issues" in Office 2008 - but the early release will come at the expense of users who have stuck with Office 2004.

According to Geoff Price, product unit manager for Microsoft's Macintosh business unit, the team plans to release the Office 2008 12.0.1 update on March 11, 2008.

Exactly which bugs will be fixed first remains a secret. Notification sounds on Leopard are a likely candidate, and a number of users claim to have encountered bugs that reliably cause the suite's applications to crash.

The downside is that the effort to fix Office 2008 has diverted resources from the development of the Open XML file format converter for Office 2004. Originally expected by mid March, the final version is now slated to arrive by the end of June.

As more people use Office 2007 and 2008, people still running 2004 are increasingly likely to receive files in Open XML format rather than the traditional Office formats. Microsoft previously released a beta version of the converter as a stand-alone application.

Both the Office 2008 update and the Open XML converter for Office 2004 will be available via the Microsoft AutoUpdate utility, or direct download from Microsoft's web site.