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Office 12, which is expected to be completed by the second half of 2006, will let end users take an Office document and convert it to PDF, Brian Jones, a program manager for Microsoft Office, said in a blog posting. People will not be able to actually read PDF files from within Office applications; a PDF viewer will still be required, he noted.
The PDF support will be built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Visio and InfoPath, Jones said.
"We've really heard the feedback that sharing documents across multiple platforms and long-term archiving are really important," Jones said in his blog. "People now have a couple options here, with the existing support for HTML and RTF, and now the new support for open XML formats and PDF."
Microsoft's XML-based document formats will be the default setting for Office 12. The advantage of having an XML-based format is that information from documents can be more easily shared and archived, according to Microsoft executives.
The importance of multiple document formats came into sharp focus last month when Massachusetts decided to mandate the use of the OpenDocument format in desktop productivity applications used in the state's executive branch agencies. Adobe's PDF is considered an "open format" under the state's policy. Microsoft's Office 12 does not support OpenDocument.
Even as Microsoft adds PDF support, the company is working on a document format, called Metro, that offers many of the same features as PDF. Metro will be delivered in late 2006 with Windows Vista.
Metro is designed to enable people to view Office documents without needing Office applications. The format also uses the graphics engine in Windows Vista to have a consistent way of displaying data on a screen and sending document data to printers, according to Microsoft.
At a meeting with Microsoft partners Saturday, Microsoft's senior vice president of Microsoft Office, Steven Sinofksy, demonstrated the PDF support. A beta test version of Office 12, which will include the PDF feature, is expected to be released this fall.
In an interview on Monday, Sinofsky said that Microsoft has been getting 120,000 requests a month that it add an option to save files in PDF. He said the decision to add the support was made some time ago.
"It's been a feature area that has been under development for the whole product cycle; we just chose to announce it this past week," he said.
An Adobe executive said that the company welcomes Office's support of PDF.
"Microsoft's announcement is really a validation that PDF is the basis for customer critical workflows," Pam Deziel, Adobe director of platform strategy, said in an interview.
At the same time, Deziel acknowledged that the company is seeing increased competition from Microsoft in a variety of areas.
"Yes, we see them encroaching into areas where Adobe has long delivered products," she said, adding that Microsoft is both a key partner and a formidable competitor. "There is healthy 'co-opetition'...That's the way the game works in this industry."
Deziel said that Adobe might see lower sales of its low-end Acrobat Elements program, but that the majority of the Acrobat business comes from higher-end products whose abilities stretch beyond Office's PDF-handling features.
It is less clear, Deziel said, how Office's new PDF capabilities will dovetail with Microsoft's plans for Metro. The ability to save and share Metro documents from any program will be built into Vista and available as an add-on to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Sinofsky declined to say what built-in Metro abilities Office 12 will have.
"We're curious about that," she said. "I don't think they've answered that question very well."
CNET News.com's Ina Fried contributed to this report.
See more CNET content tagged:
Office 12, Adobe PDF, Microsoft Office, OpenDocument Format, Adobe Systems Inc.
any app, something that Mac OS has had built-in for several years.
ages. Still, good news for the MS users, I think.
It's such a PITA to use them, though. PDFs have their place, but they are used WAY more frequently than they should be.
Funny, though, to listen to the Massechusets people sheepishly stumble though their explanation of why PDF is "open enough" for the state to use, but Office metro docs aren't, even though neither support OpenDoc. Almost like the plan started with an agenda BESIDES money or "transparent file formats", and then formulated a course of action to fit that agenda.
Anyway, it's pretty clear my shop will continue to rely on Excel (and Office), given the feature set coming in Excel 12. I think OpenOffice has about 4-6 years worth of HARD work to do to catch up, 2.0 is woefully behind the times, and will feel like Excel 5.0 when Excel 12 ships. (Yes, I think OO is great if it does what you need, it just isn't for everybody.)
There is always WordPerfect which I find to be way ahead of Microsoft Office in many area's and sadly behind in others. Microsoft know that if they use open document standards they will actually have to create a better program. And that goes against their business practices.
Most everybody I know buys Office because that's the most wildely used document format and is used in many schools and offices, not because they like using office. Some do, but many don't. Many I know switched from WordPerfect and have regretted it.
including PDF in their mandate; PDF is an open (hence
published) standard. It is also cross-platform, meaning that all
computer users have access to documents created in the PDF
format, which is the best approach for maintaining universal
accessibility for information made available to the public.
In regards to OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office...
I use both office suites and your analysis is biased and off the
mark. I would venture to say that OpenOffice (and StarOffice) is
probably more comparable to MS Office 2000 and higher, which
since most of the MS office using world is probably using either
Office 2000 or Office XP, then switching to OpenOffice or
StarOffice would not be a problem for 95% of Office users out
there today.
I'm sure they'd love to get rid of it just like they'd love for .wk1 and other old competitor formats to go away.
offer enough improvements to warrant the cost. PDF capabilities in
Office 12 are nothing more than a massive yawn
This is hardly news worthy stuff...
There's another free one that's open source but it never worked for me.
However, I think if you look around, you have been able to do the same on Mac's, again long before OSX. Once again, MS copies the same folks that Apple copied from.
Robert
It has taken years for XP to surpass 2K and it will take years for Vista to unseat both 2K and XP.
As someone else has said, Office2000/XP/2003 are already good enough for most people (not everyone, but for most). Microsoft will have to offer something really wonderful to make those people shell out money to pay for something they belive they already have in their current version. Tying the wonderous features to Vista only serves to increase the cost of the upgrade (and yes, one may even have to upgrade their hardware) and suddenly, the great feature may not be as compelling as it looked initially.
Reason #576 to get OS X, or to buy a Mac :-)
Office nor is it Mac-specific. Mac OS/X uses the
same CUPS print system that has been used for
years in most Linux distributions (predating Mac
OS/X, but not its predecessor NeXTStep) and is
also popular in Solaris.
The advantage of an application generating PDF
directly is that it can frequently produce a
more terse PDF file (smaller one). Running
OpenOffice on a Mac or Linux you can both export
a file as PDF and print to PDF. The results are
visually identical, but the application
generated output is generally smaller.
Since OpenOffice 1.1 came out, I use this PDF feature already, and now Microsoft finally reaches the state of being able to do the same? It seems to me like Microsoft is just beating Google in acquiring OpenOffice implementations. Maybe that's part of their deal with SUN they made last year?
However in the meanwhile the MS Marketing Department convinces the rest of the world, including IT Media like C|Net that this new feature in their office product is so advanced, as well as the same media copies Microsoft press releases stating that OpenOffice is outdated, backwarded and way not as advanced as their Office product! Seems to me to be one great FUD, and a big disappointment.
It not as such a complaint against Microsoft, they do a great and smart marketing job. But in my opinion, the media does have to beef up their quality and stop publishing these kind of nonsense stories without critical comments. It shouldn't be the readers to state the Sun and OpenOffice.org connection, C|Net and likes should have done that!
- The Mac had it before 10.3
- by Macsaresafer October 5, 2005 7:09 AM PDT
- I remember printing to pdf in OS 9.
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- yep
- by Karlos2121 January 24, 2006 12:05 PM PST
- Yep you can "print" a pdf file from any Mac OS X native application. Makes my job of emailing forms to people outside of my company an easy process.
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