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Information Technology News Microsoft betas Word 2007 converter for Mac
Information Technology News Microsoft betas Word 2007 converter for Mac | Microsoft betas Word 2007 converter for Mac |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Wednesday, 16 May 2007 | |
      
Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.1b is a mouthful, but a pretty accurate description of what it does. A free download from Microsoft's web site, the stand-alone converter produces RTF files compatible with Word 2004 and Word v.X - and presumably also with non-Microsoft applications. There are a number of known limitations in the initial beta, including the conversion of charts and SmartArt to pictures, and the omission of macros and Visual Basic from the generated document. The converter is unidirectional: it cannot be used to turn an Office 2004 .doc file into an Office 2007 .docx document. "You can drag and drop files onto the converter icon or application of course, but can also simply double-click .docx files to invoke it. The first thing I did is turn on this preference to immediately open a newly converted document in Word, so that I can skip the step of finding the new RTF document and dragging it to Word," wrote Mac Business Unit product unit manager Geoff Price. Once the Open XML converter is installed, updates - including PowerPoint and Excel capability promised for this (southern) winter - will be available via the Microsoft AutoUpdate utility. "The final Office 2004 for Mac converter will be a fully integrated solution providing both read and write functionality, and will be available six to eight weeks after the release of Office 2008 for Mac," said Julia Nicholls, product marketing manager in Microsoft Australia's entertainment and devices division, which handles the company's Mac products in this part of the world. "Upon the release of the final application update, the Mac BU will offer the only free, suite-wide Office Open XML converter tool." Why won't the converter be finalised until the release of Office 2008? "The converters include and rely upon the same new code that lives in Office 2008 (so you're getting early access to some of the new code today - running natively as a Universal Binary, of course). As the code improves in the applications, so will the converters improve, and as a result the converters will not be final until Office 2008 is also fully complete and fully tested," explained Price. "Office 2008... is on track for release later this year," he wrote. The converter beta release expires on December 31, 2007.{moscomment} |
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