As mentioned in the previous post Microsoft Office 2007 Service pack 2 (SP2) would include support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) and would be released 28th April and here it is – Microsoft Download. SP2 is a 290MB download so you do not want to be on a slow internet connection when you are getting it. Of course there are other features in SP2 but we are just looking at the ODF support. All features can be seen here.

From the Microsoft information page:

OpenDocument Format (ODF) support SP2 lets you open, edit, and save documents in version 1.1 of the ODF for Word) , for Excel , and for PowerPoint . Users of these Office programs can now open, edit, and save files in the OpenDocument Text (*.odt), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods), and OpenDocument Presentations (*.odp) formats.

What does this mean?

These means that users of software that users the OpenDocument Format  (OpenOffice.org, GoogleDocs and many other office applications) should be able to share, collaborate and edit documents with users of Microsoft Office (this has not be possible as standard before). This should be a very positive step forward in the adoption of Open Standards and should help the UK Government action plan.

New functionality will allow you to save and open documents in OpenDocument Format.

What are OpenDocument Formats (ODF)?

OpenDocument Format is the way an Office application like a word processor can save a document.  An example of a proprietary format is .doc which has been used for many years for Microsoft Word. The difference between .doc and ODF is that the  technical specification is freely available (from OASIS here) for anybody.  So anyone can implement ODF into their application.  Although there are more formats SP2 covers the format for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation programs. The file formats extensions are as follows:

.odt for word processing (equivalent .doc in Word)
.ods for spreadsheets (equivalent .xls on Excel)
.odp for presentations (equivalent .ppt in PowerPoint)

Why are Open standards and Open Document Formats so important?

Open Documents are the best way to able to share and collaborate on documents across multiple systems and multiple platforms . If everybody is using the same open format it should not matter what software they are using (Microsft Office, OpenOffice, Google Docs etc) or even what operating system they are using (Windows, Mac, Linux etc). This is far better than everyone trying to use their own proprietary format and then having problems when trying to share documents. The second very important benefit is that it future profs our documents. In 50 years time when we find some electronic documents that we want to see they may be held in a proprietary format that we have no access to (maybe the company has long gone out of business or we simply have no rights to view the documents). If documents are held in an open format then, with the required skills, we should be able to see these documents easily again.

The Future

This is hopefully the start of a new era in open standards support by Microsoft which will be continued in the soon to be released Windows 7 and Office 10. Only time will tell.

Below A few screenshots on the ‘Save as’ option of Excel, Word and PowerPoint:

Excel ODF support

Word ODF support

Powerpoint ODF support

]]> http://outserveblog.com/2009/04/29/open-source/opendocument-format-support-in-microsoft-office-is-here/feed/ 2 http://outserveblog.com/2009/02/06/open-source/openofficeorg-release-301-open-source-free-equivalent-to-microsoft-office/ http://outserveblog.com/2009/02/06/open-source/openofficeorg-release-301-open-source-free-equivalent-to-microsoft-office/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:40:26 +0000 Phil Oakley http://outserveblog.com/?p=108 The release of of OpenOffice.org 3.0, the free and open source equivalent to Microsoft Office, in October 2008 caused much excitement in the open source world with over 3 million downloads in the first week alone. The landmark release contained many new features and improved Microsoft Office document support including support for viewing .docx and .xlsx the new Microsoft Office 2007 Formats. Saying this it is not surprising that some people may have stayed away from using the .0 release, instead preferring to upgrade when any initial bugs foibles have been ironed out. OpenOffice.org have now released 3.01 which contains fixes and enhancements which should make this of the most stable and reliable versions ever.

Full release details from Openoffice.org:

This release fixes a number of minor issues reported with OpenOffice.org 3.0, released on October 13th last
year. Although minor releases normally do not include new features, there are two points of interest: enhanced support for grammar checkers, and an increase in the number of words held in personal word lists to 30,000.

A full list of all the issues fixed may be found in the developers’
release notes at http://development.openoffice.org/releases/3.0.1.html

OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 is available now from http://download.openoffice.org
in over 90 languages and for all major platforms. For the availability of further languages and platforms please check http://download.openoffice.org/other.html

The next release of OpenOffice.org to contain significant new user
features will be OpenOffice.org 3.1, scheduled for general availability at the end of March.