Microsoft wants Office 14 to get along
REDMOND, Wash.--For a company that is happy to list a million reasons why Office is better than OpenOffice or Google Docs or other rivals, Microsoft sure is putting a tremendous amount of effort into working better with those products.
The next version of Office will natively support the OpenDocument format (as will the next service pack for Office 2007). As it is developing the next Office, Microsoft is also documenting every change it is making as part of its commitment to documenting all of Office's various formats and protocols.
"We often talk about the changing needs of the customers and our industry," said Antoine Leblond, who leads the Office engineering effort. "The one thing we don't talk about is how those needs have changed our engineering process."
Microsoft's Antoine Leblond, in his Redmond, Wash. office on a snowy day last week.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)Adding support for more standards and file formats may not be the biggest headline-grabber, but it is important to customers, Leblond said.
"This certainly is as important as any feature we would go do," he said.
Although Leblond said it was a lot of work to go back and document 25 years of the Word file format, he said the fact that his engineers now have to write down what they are doing can pay off in a number of areas, including security.
"Frankly, it's just good engineering," he said. "It actually has a lot of benefits."
Microsoft isn't just trying to work with its rivals, though. Much of the effort in Office 14, as with the past couple of releases is to also make Office work better with business processes. Some of that is efforts like Duet, which links to SAP, but it is also about helping businesses automatically generate and integrate Office documents as opposed to having Office documents live in their own world.
"What people are doing tends to be stand-alone," Leblond said. "What we hear people asking for all the time is (ways of) extending these into corporate processes."
It will take some time for the fruits of this work to come to market. Microsoft has already said not to expect Office 14 this year. Microsoft hasn't given a lot of detail on when it will come, although, in an interview this week, Chris Capossela said that Microsoft is hoping not to be too far outside the company's traditional three-year time frame between releases.
As for naming, Microsoft is expected to eventually call the product Office 2010, at least according to recent trends as well as a few slips of the tongue I heard during my time at Microsoft last week.
In addition to the standards work, Microsoft's big focus with Office 14 has been about adding the Office Web Applications that will let Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote run in a browser. With Office 14, Microsoft will also have updated versions of the Office apps for Windows Mobile although it will really be up to cell phone makers to decide when those come to market.
Options for mobile workers
The browser-based Web apps will also help take Office onto the
iPhone. Over time, Leblond says Microsoft needs to work on even more types of phones. "We want every manner of cell phones to read Office documents," Leblond said. "That's an important thing. We don't live in this bubble."
Leblond said he understands adding more options for mobile workers is key to keeping Office relevant. "People aren't always sitting in front of their laptops or in front of their desks."
One of the interesting things to see is how Microsoft will price access to the Office Web Apps. It has talked about them largely as an adjunct to their desktop counterparts. At the same time, Microsoft workers have said that businesses will be able to offer Web-only access to employees, an option that some companies seem eager to take up.
"We don't think of the Web apps at all as replacements," Leblond said, but acknowledged that will be a "tempting model" for some customers. He also added that there are some Web-only features that make sense, given that the Web apps work only when there is an Internet connection.
The desktop software also needs to work better with the Web, Leblond said, adding that Microsoft is looking at how to make it possible so that documents can automatically be saved in the cloud. Today, Microsoft has a number of options to save to the cloud, including Live Mesh, Windows Live SkyDrive, and Office Live Workspace.
Ultimately, customers just want access to their data, he said, whether that is on a PC or from the cloud. He pointed to the way Outlook has a cached mode that works when there is no network connection, but that the data is ultimately synchronized with a server. "That's a terrific model and certainly one that we strongly believe in."
For more from Leblond, check out this video interview.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
Hey, it's not fair but that's reality and why every other major office suite has to make sure it's compatible with Office, not the other way round.
Unfortunately, the newer versions of MS Office, don't support the older Office formats very well. Instead they support .docx and have spotty support for the older formats. OpenOffice.org has better support for older MS Office documents than newer MS Office versions, so its either install free OO.o or go hunting for available licenses for older MS Office, or exercise downgrade options for newer MSO. Actually, I just install OO.o on everything, regardless of whether or not there is an MS Office installation since it's pretty good at document conversions, opening corrupted documents, and creating .pdfs
Office 2007 supports previous Office versions, it's just the default is set to docx. OO in no way has better support for Office
Just wondering?
Ina is in the difficult position that being in the public eye as a reporter that if she is not up front about her lifestyle people criticize her for hiding things, and if she is open about it she gets criticized for putting it in people's faces. Your question might seem innocent to you but really these sort of questions can easily be offensive and unnecessary when Ina is lady enough to deal with it with a lighthearted mention in her bio and leaves it at that. It is then up to us to have sufficient manners to also leave it at that.
Meanwhile I will add that her honesty and candor in this subject is an important part of why I would regard her as qualified to report on any subject for any company. Not many reporters would show that much courage and that gives me confidence that what she writes on any subject will be frank and the truth so far as she knows it.
So true. Anyone courageous enough to reveal so much about her identity is going to be courageous enough to give us the (sometimes) ugly truth.
I do not understand why as senior editor you would feel this is fitting. I could understand if this was a college news site or other non professional site. Please do not force your liberal ideas down our thoughts. Keep to reporting on the technology news.
I guess my next comments will be to the CEO of Cnet. As someone that pays to advertise on your site I will most likely be removing my account
.
So when it comes down to it. I can pay several hundred dollars extra for a few features I might need 10% of the time?
KieranMullen
http://360oregon.com
Alternatively, there are also those corporations which haven't quite gotten up the nerve to leave MS products because of the large amount of lock-in involved with using them in the first place.
Or maybe people just like Microsoft Office. I know it's hard for a bigot like you to believe but think about it... oh wait..
Is this fair? Hell no! Is this reality? Hell yes.
KieranMullen
http://360oregon.com
Why?
Funny. I was using MS Office at a neighbors house while helping with some document work. I use OOo at home so I have an actual basis for comparison.
MS Office opened more slowly and took longer to render documents.
As for bugs, maybe you could name some instead of just saying they exist.
What isn't in OOo that is needed for an Office setting? Again, you say it's incomplete but you don't say how.
Welcome to news.com
Instructions
1. There's menu on top to navigate around
2. Clicking a news item will open details
3. You can also create your very own personal account
4. blah blah blah
Start reading the news and you'll realize half a billion people uses office.
Many people use Microsoft products such as Office at work because they don't have a choice. My father for example has had Office pre-installed on every machine. He uses it to open documents sent to him from other people, but he doesn't create anything with it.
This is why I'm always skeptical when people say there are XYZ number of a Microsoft product. Install base, people who are forced to use it, and people who choose to use it are 3 different things. I suspect that third number is much lower.
If your computer is opening office documents slowly, you need a new computer....seriously.
I have a 5 year old computer and a brand new one, both custom built, they open documents instantly.
Doing a "benchmark" test by feel is very invalid. Get some solid, verifyable numbers.
2) Outlook
3) We have to because of Outlook.
I hate large corporations just as much as the next guy. But Microsoft is far from being an evil company. Saying that Microsoft is an evil company would be like living in the suburbs and saying you are afraid of getting shot. Could it happen? Yes. Is it going to? Probably not. As for Microsoft, are they greedy? Yes. Do they charge more than they need to? Yes. Welcome to the world of business, this is how you make money. But that doesn't mean that it isn't worth it sometimes.
You say that Microsoft makes you go to them as if you don't have any other choice. If you want to attempt making the same or better software and selling it for a cheaper price, go ahead. Nothing in this world is going to stop you. Consider that mabye, just MABYE Microsoft started out as a small company, with hardly any money, market share, advertising potential, etc. They didn't just start off being how they are today. They grew because people LIKED what they have to offer....and a lot of people still do. There are 5 or 6 different OSes that are worth their weight in salt, most of them are a lot cheaper than Windows. They aren't on a whole lot of people's computers though because they just don't compare to Windows in the same way. It's like the arguement that iMacs are more secure. Apple's OS isn't more secure than Windows....it's just targeted a whole lot less. The people who make viruses and the like WANT people's computers to get infected, as many as possible. That's the whole point of creating it. So if they want to infect as many computers as possible, they write it for Windows, not the Mac, because Windows has such a staggering market share. So the arguement that Apple's OS is more secure in that sense is kind of like throwing 7 rocks at one window and 1 at another and claiming that the 2nd windows is stronger and better because it didn't break as bad. It's complete and total BS.
So the moral of the story? You have options. You are a free peraon. You can use what you like. But you are not forced....and don't tell other people that you are when you are not.
The comment was to the question that people still buy office, they do, they don't have a choice or they do is a different question. BTW I use ubuntu and open office and i love it.
30% more compatibility!
Disclaimer you'll still need Microsoft Office to view the other 70% of this document.
Microsoft does something to help benefit the customer and still gets reamed......
People will find any reason to hate something.
However, congratulations to Microsoft for trying to meet their customers' needs.
It's pathetic when they make both buying, and installing the software a PITA.
OpenOffice isn't as nice but I don't have to beg to buy it, don't have to beg to get a product key, or phone home to activate it.
Idiots like you fill up the customer service demands so that real problem can't get through.
MS Office wasn't meant to install on 10 computers with one license. And MS office software is available easily at your local retail store. Stop BSing.
if ur not , an u just need to type a letter , make a simple spreadsheet , or watever , there openoffice
or google docs
i like good docs, i have office but havnt used to exp for business work, for my personal use i find google easier , its all web based an free ,its not powerful but it just works for wat i need,
PS, our company is dumping outlook (crashes too much an to slow) for a online service called planplusonline.com , they have a email client, cal, database, contacts....
- by Jonnygthedrummer March 11, 2009 5:48 AM PDT
- btw i dis like the ribbon , just keep it simple, File, Edit, Insert, Help ,,, not icon ribbon stuff
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (66 Comments)(dont fix it if its not broken)
but besides that office is good