Microsoft delays Office converters for Mac

As it tries to finish the next version of Office for the Mac, Microsoft has delayed efforts to enable current users of the productivity software to work with the new file formats used in the latest Windows version of the desktop software.

Microsoft now says a plug-in that will allow Office 2004 to fully work with the new formats won't be ready until six to eight weeks after the Office 2008 for Mac software suite ships, sometime in the second half of this year. Instead, the company is offering a separate downloadable converter program, starting Tuesday, designed to enable Office for Mac users to convert Word 2007's .docx files to the Rich Text Format, or RTF, which can be read by all Mac OS X versions of Office.

The Redmond, Wash., software giant said it hopes to have similar conversion tools for Excel and PowerPoint by the summer. This is not the first time Microsoft has pushed out its plans for Mac support for the new Office file formats. In December, Microsoft said a conversion tool for the formats, originally expected around the time of the product's January mainstream launch, wouldn't come until March or April.

"We had to make some choices," said Amanda Lefebvre, a marketing manager in Microsoft's Mac business unit. "We are continuing to focus our development on the completion of Office 2008."

On the Windows side of the house, Microsoft has a downloadable converter that enables Office 2003 to seamlessly process documents written in the new formats. As of January, Microsoft had said it planned to have a test version of a similar tool for Mac Office 2004 available this spring. Now, however, it says the full-featured tools will ship shortly after the release of Office 2008, which is designed to natively handle the new file formats.

Lefebvre said that while the Word converter tool being made available for download on Tuesday has some limitations, it also has some benefits, such as an option that lets people convert multiple documents at once.

"Part of our goal is to get something out there up and running," she said. "Word is the most frequently used (Office application)."

Lefebvre said Microsoft's efforts to finish Office 2008 are still on track, though she did not give any details about when or if a public beta version might be available. Microsoft said in March that it had started private testing of the software.

[FellowConspirator]

FOSS converters already exist...

OpenOffice and NeoOffice already read/write those formats.
They can be used as a conversion tool, if needed.

It's peculiar that MS is allowing itself to fall behind in support of
it's own Office Suite and file formats. You'd think they'd show a
little love to Office users - it's 1 of the 2 products that they net
profits from, they should throw the customer a bone rather than
get them to download an open-source office suite that now has
better MS document format suport than MS' own products.

[irondog1970]

Fortunately for most Office users?

?this won't be a problem. I am a tech writer & get lots of documents from lots of different sources. So far, I haven't seen one .docx file yet.

From what I gather, it will be quite some time before the new office takes over the old.

[BobHannan]

Monopoly ?

Who says there's no monopoly. The EU has it right - only they're
too lenient with Microsoft.

[FutureGuy]

HahaHAAhaha

Apple more the deserves it, after all the company makes its living making negative ads targeting MS.

[rcrusoe]

It wasn't a big deal in 97, and it's less of one now.

We went through this same game when Microsoft released Office 97 with new file formats.

No one rushed out to upgrade to O97 and those that did ended up having to Save As the old formats when their customers, etc. returned the files as unreadable.

A lot more people use MS Office now than in 97, and since there hasn't been a single featured added in the last 10 years that most users want or need, very few people are in a rush to buy the latest Office versions.

Besides, a growing number of goverments and businesses are requiring documents in Open Document Format, not Microsoft Open Office XML.

It will be years, if then, before anyone really needs to be able to read Microsoft's new formats.

[catbus99]

A shareware rescue?

The Mac has always been supported by a rather brilliant developer community. After this announcement, I wouldn't be surprised to see a more elegant third-party solution arriving within weeks. I work in a fairly large college computer lab and we've only seen a couple of docx files come through so far.

[anarchyreigns]

That's okay, Microshit, we're all using NeoOffice/OpenOffice anyway!

<eom>

[jesmac418]

Microsoft and delay's go together

I am getting used too delay's coming from Microsoft. They eather
have too optimistic of a schedule or their programmer's find out
they screwed up in the last month's of a project. I actually think
their is another Vista floating around Microsoft that could not be
completed.

[RompStar_420]

who cares

There are so many better products out there for the Mac from the Open Community and they are all free. Who needs a half baked product anyways.

[RompStar_420]

who cares

There are so many better products out there for the Mac from the Open Community and they are all free. Who needs a half baked product anyways.