Microsoft’s big news – XML
Microsoft announced the adoption of the open standard XML as the default file format for Office 12. Since there are already hundreds of news items about this I’m just providing a link to many of them:
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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There had to be a way of making Office documents not open in older versions of the Office suite to force people to upgrade…
Actually, I believe the old formats will still be there, just not the default.
Sounds good, they are also including anew format to rival pdf in Longhorn. Is there any other news about what we can expect in Office12?
JK, I think you read PJE’s post backwards.. the new one will still be able to read the old file formats (.doc) but the old ones won’t be able to read XML (unless hey already can – I have no idea about this, just gathering it from PJE’s post). Thusly he is saying all new documents (now .xml) won’t be readable on older versions of office, forcing everyone to upgrade.
Although this is always true, as older versions of word can’t read new ones (you have to specifically save it in the old format).
-arebelspy
Office 2003 will read/write XML files now. This is a big step for third party developers who now have an open standard that will make it easy to create utilities that inter-operate with Office documents.
JonGh, I am sure MS will trickle new feature info out a little at a time between now and product release.
Further info from eweek:
“For users of older versions of Office—specifically Office 2000, Office 2003 and Office XP—Microsoft will make available software downloads that will allow them to read, edit and save using the new file formats.”