Mac Users are Shit Out of Luck

MSoft has officially launched Office 2007, but that's bad news for Mac users. Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 now all use different file formats: docx, xlsx and pptx.

Microsoft is calling these "Microsoft Office Open XML Formats", but Office for Mac users will find them far from "open". In fact, they can't read them. Take Word 2007, for example. By default it saves documents in the new *.docx format. Trying to open one of these in Word for Mac 2004 yields the following garbled mess:

Office 2003 for Windows users can download a compatibility pack which makes it possible to open Office 2007 documents. However, while the Mac Business Unit has promised converters, it is providing no certainty on when they will be available.

A spokesperson for the MBU reminded APC of its promise at WWDC that "free downloadable converters would be available" following the release of Office 2007 for Windows, but was unable to tell us when.

"Unfortunately it is still to early for us to say when the converters will be available", she said.

Hopefully, I asked two developers who produce alternative word processors that currently import and export Word documents (Mellel, Nisus Writer Express) if they were planning to have converters for their apps available before MBU gets around to releasing theirs. Sadly, not.

Dave Larsen of Nisus said that resourcing is the big issue for small developers: "At the moment, we don't have any plans to do it. However, once the new Office gets released, I suppose we will seriously look into it."

Of course, Office 2007 applications can save their documents in "backward compatible" formats, but that be a pain for co-workers and Mac users alike.

But there is a silver lining to this cloud, the only good news to come out of the announcement is the reluctance of businesses to upgrade. According to some sources, businesses will wait up to two years to make the switch.

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