Not sure which is more disappointing though, the delay or the removal of resources for the XML converter.

THE WHOLE POINT of getting the new version for our campus is file format compatibility. Without the converter working properly, Mac users are being marginalized beyond belief. We have successfully stalled our PC colleagues from installing the new Office 2007 suite until this month, but now they're moving forward full steam ahead and the files are virtually useless without a properly working coverter. Now with the delay of Office for Mac, we are going to see an undue amount of pressure to migrate all users off of their Macs to PCs. Yes, it is THAT important. My boss started with it last week, he's one of 16 Deans. They're all in the same boat. If we can't accurately share files as multi-platform, we will be forced to ONE platform. That's it. Rational? No. Reality? Yes.

All this and the ISO hasn't even adopted the new file formats as standard and don't even vote until September 2nd. I hate to say it, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft is going to have their way and the new format will win. Mac and Linux users beware if such thing happens.

Well, no matter how hard I try, I can now not bring myself to buy Office when it's released.

Nice game, Microsoft.

I dunno Microsoft, maybe you could divert resources dedicated to updating Clippyâ„¢ and all those "Are you sure..." dialogs to the more, um, basic functions. It's worth a try.

Last I checked Office 2007 can still save documents to .Doc by default, so what is the issue? Moreover, Microsoft does have the XML Beta converter out:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/download/office2004/converterbeta.xml

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Tiger wrote:
Not sure which is more disappointing though, the delay or the removal of resources for the XML converter.

THE WHOLE POINT of getting the new version for our campus is file format compatibility. Without the converter working properly, Mac users are being marginalized beyond belief. We have successfully stalled our PC colleagues from installing the new Office 2007 suite until this month, but now they're moving forward full steam ahead and the files are virtually useless without a properly working coverter. Now with the delay of Office for Mac, we are going to see an undue amount of pressure to migrate all users off of their Macs to PCs. Yes, it is THAT important. My boss started with it last week, he's one of 16 Deans. They're all in the same boat. If we can't accurately share files as multi-platform, we will be forced to ONE platform. That's it. Rational? No. Reality? Yes.

All this and the ISO hasn't even adopted the new file formats as standard and don't even vote until September 2nd. I hate to say it, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft is going to have their way and the new format will win. Mac and Linux users beware if such thing happens.

It seems like Apple and Microsoft are playing a game - neither wants to be the first to release their new product.

Apple wants Microsoft to release first so they can better position iWork to compete with it.

Microsoft wants Apple to release iWork first then they can better position office to compete with it.

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Terrin wrote:
Last I checked Office 2007 can still save documents to .Doc by default, so what is the issue? Moreover, Microsoft does have the XML Beta converter out:

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The following issues are known to exist in this Beta release:

* Macros and Visual Basic content are not included in the converted file.
* Charts and SmartArt graphics are converted to pictures.

The following issues might occur in this Beta release:

* Graphics and other objects in the document might appear with a different size.
* Color fills and shading in tables might not be preserved.
* Conversion might not succeed if the document contains a bibliography or citations.
* Conversion might not succeed if the document contains WordArt.
* Document layout and formatting might not be preserved.
* Some Unicode characters might not be preserved.
* Conversion might not succeed if the document contains very large pictures.
* Conversion might not succeed if you use an SMB network volume as the preferred destination for converted files.
* Picture bullets might not be preserved.
* Fonts might be substituted.

This Beta release expires on August 15, 2007.

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Anonymous wrote:
It seems like Apple and Microsoft are playing a game - neither wants to be the first to release their new product.

Apple wants Microsoft to release first so they can better position iWork to compete with it.

Microsoft wants Apple to release iWork first then they can better position office to compete with it.

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Article wrote:
Because of the effort the MacBU is putting into meeting the revised launch deadline, development efforts are being pulled away from the Office Open XML file format converter and Remote Desktop Client 2.0 projects.

I do not see why the convertor would include the VB scripts, as it will not be supported in the final version of the software. It is worth noting that I read somewhere that Microsoft will kill off VB in the WIndows version of Office the next major release. If true, Microsoft's decision to not include VB on the Mac version during this release seems understandable. Afterall Microsoft had to do a whole bunch of additional work on the MAc version of Office this time around.

Also, I do not see the issue for the original poster I responded to. Why cannot the organization require Office 2007 users to save all documents as .Doc files until all versions of Office are on the same page?

I have used Maclinkplus in the past and have found it to be a real life saver. I haven't tried it for this purpose yet.

I will try your link suggestion.

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gslusher wrote:


* Macros and Visual Basic content are not included in the converted file.
* Charts and SmartArt graphics are converted to pictures. . . .


Sounds like it's not all that useful. The latest version of Dataviz's MacLinkPlus Deluxe supposedly includes read-only conversion of Word 2007 and Excel 2007 files, though MacLinkPlus Deluxe 16 (any remember "MacLink," before the Plus and Deluxe, when it was provided as part of ClarisWorks?) has not receive good reviews on VersionTracker, either, though mostly because it's not yet Universal Binary.

Suggestion: Terrin, use the BBCode URL command, instead of posting such a long URL as text. It farkles the page formatting, making the page much wider.

I doubt it. Apple wants Office to be released. It signed a five year agreement with Microsoft to make sure it happens. iWorks, no matter how good it is, will not likely steal much of Office's business. I use Office because it is far more feature rich then other offerings, and it is compatible with the Office Suite almost everybody else uses.

To be fair, Microsoft had quite a bit of work getting Office to be a Universal application. From what I read, Apple caught Microsoft by surprise with the Intel transition. To make Office Universal it had to switch to Apple's development tools. If you read some of Adobe's developer's blogs they mention that Apple's developer tools have come a long way, but when Apple announced this transition the tools were lacking the ability to handle complex applications. Apple worked closely with Adobe to fix some of these shortcomings. I suppose Microsoft had similar issues. Moreover, from what I read I think Microsoft had much further to go to move its code over to Apple's tools then Adobe did.

Other then the whole compatibility issue, which is important, making Office Universal doesn't' really excite me. My step father uses a MacBook Pro running Office X and it runs more then fine.

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Guest wrote:
It seems like Apple and Microsoft are playing a game - neither wants to be the first to release their new product.

Apple wants Microsoft to release first so they can better position iWork to compete with it.

Microsoft wants Apple to release iWork first then they can better position office to compete with it.

My workplace has 3,500 employees and 32,000 students. Collaborators are world wide.

Getting people to SAVE AS to any particular format is virtually impossible. There is on method for requiring such an action. And if you've dealt with tenured faculty, you know what I'm talking about.