Microsoft on Thursday released an update for Office for Mac 2008, bringing the most current version to 12.1.4. This update fixes a very specific problem that was caused by the last update. Version 12.1.4 addresses a calendar issue in versions of Microsoft Entourage that were updated with the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.3 Update. According to Microsoft, the issue prevents Exchange accounts in Entourage from sending meeting invitations and responses. This can occur when an Entourage identity is configured with more than one mail account. The 16MB update is available from Microsoft's Web site. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/153080/.html?tk=rss_news
OpenOffice.org has released two patches that repair older versions of its open-source office productivity suite. The two vulnerabilities do not affect OpenOffice.org's latest 3.0 version, released earlier this month. Software versions prior to version 2.4.2 are affected. The first vulnerability concerns Windows Metafile (WMF), an image file format, according to an advisory from OpenOffice.org. The flaw can be exploited if a specially crafted StarOffice or StarSuite document with a WMF file is opened. StarOffice and StarSuite are office products from Sun Microsystems. A remote user would then have the same access privileges to the PC as the victim and could execute arbitrary code. No working exploit has yet been seen. The second problem is essentially the same, but involves the Enhanced Metafile (EMF) format, an improved version of WMF used for printing graphics. Again, if a StarOffice or StarSuite document is opened that maliciously manipulates the EMF format, a remote user could run code on the machine. Openoffice.org is unaware of a working exploit. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/153062/.html?tk=rss_news
The next version of Office for Windows will contain lightweight versions of its apps that will be delivered through Web browsers. Even though the release is for Windows, Microsoft representatives confirmed for Macworld that the Office Web apps would work with Safari and Firefox. The company explained the move to the Web at its Professional Developers Conference. Microsoft said it plans to deliver all of its technology as "software plus services," with Office being one those technologies. The Office Web applications will be lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Using the apps, you can use a browser to create, edit, and collaborate on Office documents. "We raised the stakes with Office Web applications. With this development, people can benefit from Office as a service on their browser, as a downloadable application on their phone, and as software on their PCs," said Chris Capossela, senior vice president, Microsoft Business Division. "This is the kind of flexibility that our software plus services approach makes possible, and is helping us deliver the kind of innovation that businesses and consumers expect from Microsoft." Microsoft will deliver the apps through Office Live with ad supported and subscription versions. Business customers have the option of using a hosted subscription service. "We are deeply committed to offering our customers the technology they need to succeed. To that end, we're investing in software plus services for the long term, something that sets us apart from our competitors," said Capossela.
Microsoft has been hinting for some time at plans to not just rival but outdo Google Docs, and today we finally got a glimpse of what the company has in mind. Surprise: They're turning to an old dog that's going to learn some impressive-looking new tricks-Microsoft Office. In demos at the very end of a long Professional Developers Conference keynote that also marked the public debut of Windows 7, a Microsoft Office team member showed how web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that will be bundled with the next release of Office will allow people to seamlessly collaborate on documents that can reside online or on PCs. (Microsoft later posted a news release about its plans to create "lightweight" versions of Office apps for the Web.) In one of the demos, the keynote audience saw two people modifying a One Note document-one from within a desktop version of OneNote and another working on the browser-based version of the note-taking application. And in another, we watched a full-featured spreadsheet being modified in similar fashion, in close to real time (there was a slight lag). The Webification of Office promises functionality that goes beyond what Microsoft already offers as Google alternatives in its existing Windows Live program-in fact, Microsoft says it will deliver the Office apps via Office Live. The beauty of this approach (and why it might actually succeed in winning converts from Google Docs) is that Microsoft starts the Web competition with a big advantage in terms of formats: Office documents remain the lingua franca of business communication. The demos suggest that the problem of offline access would go away, since documents would be automatically synced (via Live Mesh technology). What remains to be seen is what you'd need to do to avail yourself of Web-desktop synchronicity-would you have to sign up for some kind of Microsoft collaboration service, or pay for storage space that Google now gives away for free? We don't yet know when Microsoft plans to release the next version of Office (although if past history is any indication, it shouldn't be too long after Windows 7, which is still officially slated to debut in early 2010). But Microsoft has said it will be working on extending anytime-anywhere functionality to mobile devices (presumably Windows Mobile devices). In his remarks during both today's and yesterday's keynotes, Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said over and over again that Microsoft intends to bring customers the benefits of the desktop, the Web, and mobility in the years to come. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/152952/Office_14_Gets_Webby.html?tk=rss_news
&A: Microsoft Senior Vice President Chris Capossela discusses how extending Office applications to the browser will increase choice and flexibility for customers. At the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, where the announcement was made, PressPass spoke with Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Business Division. We asked him how Office Web applications complement Office, and what this will mean for people who use Office applications. PressPass: What are you announcing today? Capossela: As part of the next release of Office, we’re announcing that Microsoft will deliver Office Web applications - lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote - through a browser. With these new applications, people can use a browser to create, edit, and collaborate on Office documents. What’s great is that this provides a consistent Office experience when and where our customers want it, regardless of whether they are accessing their Office documents through the PC, phone, or browser. PressPass: What does this announcement mean for Microsoft? Capossela: We are on a path to deliver all our technology as “software plus services,” and today is an important milestone in this journey. For more than 10 years, millions of workers have benefited from Microsoft cloud-based services, including Hosted Exchange, Outlook Web Access and Live Meeting. Earlier this year, we announced Microsoft Online, which businesses such as Coca-Cola Enterprises, Blockbuster, and Energizer are using to access Exchange and SharePoint over the Web. Last month, more than 1 million people turned to Office Live Workspace for sharing and collaborating over the Internet. Viewing a Word document in Word Web application. Click for hi-res versionToday in Los Angeles, we raised the stakes with Office Web applications. With this development, people can benefit from Office as a service on their browser, as a downloadable application on their phone, and as software on their PCs. This is the kind of flexibility that our software plus services approach makes possible, and is helping us deliver the kind of innovation that businesses and consumers expect from Microsoft. PressPass: How will the Office Web applications benefit customers? Capossela: Customers’ requirements have changed, as have their expectations of technology. While Office is synonymous with desktop productivity, the idea of “desktop” has changed from a PC-centric notion to one in which people are empowered on the PC, on the phone, and with a browser. Our customers don’t use one device, but rather several. They want a seamless, synchronized experience across those devices to help them work smarter, faster, and better. Office Web applications will make that a reality. PressPass: How will people receive Office Web applications? Editing OneNote notes in OneNote Web application. Click for hi-res versionCapossela: We will deliver Office Web applications to consumers through Office Live, which is a consumer service with both ad-funded and subscription offerings. For business customers, we will offer Office Web applications as a hosted subscription service and through existing volume licensing agreements. We will show a private technology preview of the Office Web applications later this year. For more information about this and other details about the Office Web applications, people can sign up for Office Live Workspace at workspace.officelive.com. PressPass: Why is Microsoft doing this? Capossela: We are deeply committed to offering our customers the technology they need to succeed. To that end, we’re investing in software plus services for the long term, something that sets us apart from our competitors. Office Web applications complement the Office suite and Office Mobile applications and enable our customers to share and collaborate more effectively through the familiar Office experience. Editing a Word document in Word Web application. Click for hi-res versionWe know our customers use their PC, phone, and browser in different situations depending on their needs. The browser is particularly important when you need to access and edit files while traveling, working remotely, or using someone else’s PC. Together, these new tools enable new styles of community-based collaboration where multiple people can contribute simultaneously to various work through the internet. PressPass: Will your partners be able to take advantage of the shift to Web-based solutions? Capossela: Over the years, thousands of partners have sold Microsoft Office to millions of customers worldwide. The opportunities for our partners will increase as we continue to innovate with Microsoft Office. This announcement does not change the way customers buy Office. The biggest opportunity for OEM and retail partners continues to be selling Office to help their customers get better results faster. When available with the next version of Microsoft Office, Office Web applications will increase the opportunity for OEM and retail partners as they extend the value of Microsoft Office to the Web, thereby addressing the full range of their customers’ needs. PressPass: Why are you making this announcement today at PDC? Capossela: At this event, Microsoft has shared how we will deliver a platform strategy for both the Web and desktop, so it makes sense to talk about how we also are extending our productivity tools in new ways. Office Web applications underscore our companywide focus on software plus services, which reaches from the backend with our platform, through to the front end with our flagship productivity tools. Reference : http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/Features/2008/oct08/10-28PDCOffice.mspx?rss_fdn=Top%20Stories
OpenOffice.org 3.0 was downloaded 3 million times in its first week, with about 80% of the downloads by Windows users, an official with the group said in a blog post last week. The successful introduction of the open source office suite came despite the group's download servers being temporarily overwhelmed by demand for the new software last week. Only 221,000 downloads by Linux users were recorded, leading John McCreesh, head of marketing for OpenOffice.org, to suggest a massive undercount. McCreesh said 90% of Linux users traditionally receive OpenOffice.org updates straight from their Linux distribution's vendor, which would explain the relatively low Linux count. Many non-English versions of OpenOffice.org are also distributed by alternate Web sites, and OpenOffice.org is still widely distributed via free CD-ROMs in magazines, said McCreesh. With the undercount included, OpenOffice.org 3.0 may already be installed on up to 5 million computers worldwide, McCreesh said in a blog post. OpenOffice.org's goal of winning 40% of the office software market by 2010 "doesn't seem as ambitious today as it did four years ago," said McCreesh. Michael Croan, a senior marketing manager at Microsoft, said, "Business customers can easily see that Microsoft Office provides the productivity improvements they seek." "Microsoft Office is well integrated, well supported and up-to-date with modern workforce requirements like collaboration, which is not always the case with open source alternatives. As a result, most customers will continue to seek the productivity improvements they can get from Office," Croan said. Microsoft claims more than 550 million users of Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org's total usage, while unknown, remains small overall, despite its free price. That is due to document compatibility fears and Microsoft's aggressive, tactical discounting.OpenOffice.org 3.0 eases some adoption concerns. It is able to open all Office-formatted files, including the latest Office Open XML (OOXML) documents (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.), but it cannot save OOXML files natively. OpenOffice.org is also likely counting on the current corporate cost-cutting environment to help its third try at unseating Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org 3.0 also marks the first native Mac OS X version. Mac users accounted for 320,000 downloads of the new software in the first week. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/152768/openoffice_open_source.html?tk=rss_news
Now that the desktop revolution is largely over, most of the excitement lies in the counter-desktop revolution that is bringing all the flair developed by the desktop programmers back to the safe world of the server. Caspio is one of the most prominent players seeking to lure the desktop database builders away from Microsoft Access and back into the datacenter's fold. The company has been around since before the last bubble burst, and now it boasts a number of prominent companies as customers. The process is simple and requires, as Caspio's Web site promises, "no more programming." First you specify some database tables and then you describe how these tables can be filled up with Web forms. After a bit of testing, you push a button and copy some JavaScript, and the forms are deployed on your Web site. The data your Web application captures lives in Caspio's datacenter. (Cogheadclicks for noncoders with a flexible XML database and drag-and-drop form builder. See Peter Wayner's review in InfoWorld's Test Center.) Caspio's solution, called Caspio Bridge, is part of a wave of Web-based applications for building Web applications. Some, such as JotForm, WuFoo, FormAssembly, and their many cousins, promise to help automate the process of turning forms into tables and CSV files (see " Application builders in the sky"). Others, such as Coghead, want to help you develop an entire Web application. The line between them is getting quite blurry, but Caspio Bridge lies much closer to Coghead because it aspires to help you build full-fledged, database-driven Web applications. As a programmer, I'm loath to call what Caspio and Coghead let you do as "not programming" because it includes much of the architectural forethought and experience that pays my rent. You do need to think about the structure of the data and make a number of other decisions that take up many of the early meetings during a programming project. Smart database design can make a difference. After that, though, using Caspio is just filling out metaforms that specify what other forms will look like. Wizards and Widgets
Caspio won't help you build the coolest applications, but you can accomplish quite a bit without much effort. The meat of the process comes during a fairly complex wizard for designing Web forms. Each field in the data table can have a number of basic and advanced rules for converting it into a field on the form seen by the user. I particularly liked the way Caspio implemented the duplicate fields used by many Web sites to gather fragile information, such as new passwords. All it takes is one click on a check box; Caspio inserts a second field and automatically checks the two for consistency. All of the standard widgets are provided, plus a few somewhat novel ones, including a CAPTCHA button and Google Maps integration. The look of these widgets is vintage Microsoft, and the icons will take you back to simpler days when your real estate was going up in value. Although there's a good deal of JavaScript at work here, Caspio's designers have stayed away from the pastels, morphing blocks, and pulsing DIVs so common in Web 2.0 implementations. After the form is built, though, comes a brick wall. There's no simple way to add your own custom validation to the server side of the application. Caspio offers a number of suggestions for how to add JavaScript to the client side, but you can't tweak any of the application logic on the back end. This will be frustrating to a programmer who wants control over every layer in the stack, but it's easy to see why Caspio locks the server down. I've played with one reporting tool that lets you add arbitrary Java classes into the reporting logic. It's slick and programmer-friendly, but it fails badly when something goes wrong. The tool offers to compile your Java for you, but if it finds an error, it fills the screen with a stack dump. Caspio, like all of these server-based tools, must anticipate the worst that a user can do, which usually means endless loops and other simple mistakes. Exiling extra logic to the client is a simple and fairly elegant solution to malicious code, though Caspio's JavaScript customization comes with fine print: "Caspio is not responsible for the correctness, compatibility or applicability of these functionalities." Here is where the counterrevolution starts losing punch. Pushing the logic to the client can make security much harder because a malicious person can hijack any extra JavaScript you add to your client. I don't think that this is a real concern for most of the applications built on top of Caspio, but it's something to keep in mind. Caspio does offer a good number of security features, including the option of encrypting your development sessions with SSL. Loaded and Locked InThe lock-in with Caspio can be brutal as it is with most similar tools. Once you build your application in Caspio, you can't really move it. This makes sense, given the business model, which charges nothing up front and a monthly fee afterward. You pay only if your application is successful, and eternal devotion to Caspio is the price. The costs, though, aren't steep. Caspio encourages unlimited users and measures the sophistication of an application by counting the number of forms and the data stored in tables. By contrast, Coghead and WuFoo count the full-time users, although both are trying to tweak their model to avoid charging for users who visit only occasionally. Caspio avoids the distinction between full-time and casual users entirely. What is truly surprising about Caspio is how much it feels like a Microsoft product. While there are many programming idioms common in Web applications, Caspio sidestepped most of them and built something that will look very familiar to Microsoft Access users. I did a double-take when I pushed the "edit" button for a page because Caspio took me back to the beginning of the page's configuration wizard. You may be working in a Web browser, but It's just like using Windows. The underlying data structure will also be familiar to Microsoft SQL Server users; Caspio has SQL Server running underneath everything. SQL back ends are useful for programmers because they make it easier to link the system with other tools that expect to find an SQL database minding the information. The data ends up in a format that's comforting to the DBAs, and all of the unrelenting logic of SQL comes with it. I remember enjoying the fact that Coghead uses a more flexible XML database as the back end because it liberates you from creating a table for every single collection of items. There are other ways that Caspio will be familiar to programmers and slightly confounding to the nonprogrammers. The look and feel for a data page is built out of CSS and a wizard. Pushing the "deploy" button assembles the parts in much the same way as pushing a "make" button. Other competitors do a better job of building WYSIWYG environments that let casual users plop down a field wherever they darn well please. As a programmer, I like Caspio's solution, but I suspect that the rest of the world may enjoy the WYSIWYG alternatives. Bridge to Office
There are several other nice features that Microsoft users will appreciate. Microsoft Office applications can suck down data directly from Caspio using plug-ins. This tight integration lets you tweak the data to create charts and ad hoc reports on your desktop. It's not the same thing as a shell account, but it has some advantages for everyone. Caspio is also expanding the widget tools to make it easier to integrate your data tables with other sites. The most promising market for Caspio will continue to be the casual programmer from a large Microsoft house. This set includes the people who aren't in the IT department per se, but who can do more with spreadsheets than just fill in rectangles. Many Excel users find they need to a way to make the Web site collect data or display it for the customers. Anyone with a good intuition for how computers work will be able to accomplish this, even if they don't have any formal programming training. The data can then be brought back down to Microsoft applications, where it can be massaged as needed. Another marketplace may be the curators of large Web sites, such as those for newspapers. These large ships are often hard to steer quickly, and that makes it hard to integrate new forms or data applications. Caspio has a nice, JavaScript-based deployment mechanism that can make its applications look like they live on your Web site. That's a nice trick because it's often hard to do much with these large Web sites beyond including a bit of JavaScript. Caspio Bridge can do more than just replace desktop databases -- it can also replace parts of Web sites. But that's life during the creative destruction era of Web 2.0. Caspio is a good, solid tool with a polish that will be welcome in many Microsoft houses. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/152715/microsoft_caspio_web.html?tk=rss_news
We’re pleased to announce that Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office system is expected to be released in the near future. Although we aren’t yet announcing the exact release date, it will fall between February and April of 2009. Historically, we have waited to communicate details about service packs until their release (or very shortly before). As we communicated with SP3 for Office 2003 and SP1 for the 2007 Office System, we will be taking steps to increase transparency and visibility into the Office servicing model at the request of our customers. To that end, we would like to start sharing some details into what will be included in SP2 for the 2007 Office system. This is by no means an exhaustive list of everything included in this service pack and we will share more details prior to the final release, but we want to start communicating to customers what they should be aware of at a high level. To be fair, this is not the first time we have talked about SP2. Several months ago, we announced that we’ll be further demonstrating our increased commitment to interoperability by including support for Open Document Format (ODF), XML Paper Specification (XPS), and Portable Document Format (PDF) in SP2. In addition to those file format additions, some other highlights that you’ll find in SP2 include: For Office Desktop Programs:· Improved Outlook Calendaring Reliability· Improved Outlook Performance· Enabling Object Model support for Charts in PowerPoint and Word· Improved cryptographic functionality by supporting all cryptographic algorithms offered by the operating system· Improved functionality in Excel’s charting mechanism· Ability to ungroup SmartArt graphics (and as a result, the ability to add animations to them in PowerPoint)· Ability for Visio to export UML models to an XML file compliant with the XMI standard· Tool that enables the uninstall of Office client Service Packs For Servers:· Performance and manageability improvements to variations in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) including STSADM commands for repairing links between source and target pages· Improvements around processing status approvals from Office Project Web Access into Office Project Professional 2007 · Improvements to read-only content databases and index rebuild timer jobs in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Continue At Source Reference : http://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2008/10/22/announcing-service-pack-2-sp2-for-the-2007-microsoft-office-system.aspx
Office 2007's XML-based document formats will soon be published as a formal ISO standard। Now what?It looks as if Microsoft's OOXML office document file format will be published as an open standard after all. The International Standards Organization (ISO) today rejected four appeals from subsidiary national standards bodies that claimed ballot irregularities during the standardization process. Had these appeals been upheld, an OOXML standard could have been delayed indefinitely, despite Microsoft's best efforts to fast-track the process. Barring any further hold-ups, ISO is expected to publish the full text of the standard within the next few weeks. But as the dust clears, many IT managers and office software users will likely be left scratching their heads: What does an open standard office file format from Microsoft actually get us? A competing set of file formats, called ODF (Open Document Format), was accepted as an ISO standard more than two years ago. ODF is already in use in a number of competing office software products, including OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, and IBM's Lotus Symphony. Its success in the face of Microsoft's protracted effort to produce its own standard even recently prompted Microsoft employee Stuart McKee to remark, " ODF has clearly won [the standards battle]." Indeed, Microsoft's failure to participate in the ODF standardization process has caused some to interpret the software giant's efforts to pursue its own, competing standard as little more than an attempt to undermine ODF. For its part, Microsoft has recently stated that it will include ODF support in a future update of Office 2007 -- but, interestingly, it will not actually include support for the ISO standardized versions of its own file formats until some future release of the suite. According to Andy Updegrove of technology law firm Gesmer Updegrove, the rejection of the appeals against OOXML standardization is business as usual for the ISO process. "Today's announcement is not unexpected. It will be significant to learn, however, what the actual votes may have been," he says. If there were many votes cast in support of the appeals, it may be evidence that ISO's processes may be skewed in favor of the interests of large corporations, such as Microsoft, rather than those of its member countries. "The greater the support, the more urgent it will be for ISO and IEC to reform their processes in order to remain credible and relevant to the IT marketplace," Updegrove says. Just how much impact an ISO-approved OOXML will actually have on the IT marketplace -- or on users of office software -- remains to be seen. On the plus side, an approved standard should make it easier for competitors, including open source software projects, to interoperate with Microsoft Office, which has been difficult in the past. On the minus side, the proliferation of overlapping standards could serve to further muddy the marketplace, making bewildered customers much more likely to stick to the status quo. Do you see Microsoft's move toward standardized file formats as positive or negative for your business? Sound off in the PC World Community Forums। Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/149895/microsoft's_ooxml_wins_iso_approval.html?tk=rss_news
Microsoft will begin alpha testing the next version of Office in November or December, according to a blog posting by a Microsoft employee. According to a blog posting by Hayley Rixon, who works on the Microsoft business intelligence team, Microsoft is calling for people to be part of a technology adoption program (TAP) that will give them an early opportunity to test the monitoring and analytics components of Office PerformancePoint Server. The TAP for this product will be a part of the TAP for Office 14, the alpha test of which will begin in the "November/December timeframe this year," according to the blog posting. Office PerformancePoint Server is business performance analysis software that will be a part of the Office 14 release. Microsoft's public relations firm did not respond to a request for comment Monday. The deadline for submissions to be a part of the Office PerformancePoint Server TAP is Aug. 28, according to the post. Office is the most widely used productivity software in the world, though competitors such as Google and IBM are competing with Microsoft by offering free office productivity applications. With the latest version, Office 2007, Microsoft has begun to expand business versions of Office to include collaboration and business-intelligence capabilities, as well as links to Microsoft's enterprise applications and database। Though Microsoft has divulged few details about Office 14, the company probably will expand these features and links in the next release. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/149974/2008/08/.html?tk=rss_news
Microsoft on Monday unveiled projects to improve data portability between Office 2007 and other document file formats, including the design of a new translator for exchanging OOXML (Office Open XML) and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) documents. The company also posted the 1.0 version of technical documentation for protocols in Office and other software that enable those applications to interact with third-party programs. The moves are part of a companywide commitment, unveiled in February, to foster interoperability, an initiative launched under pressure from an ongoing antitrust case in the European Union and competition from Linux and open-source software. On Monday Microsoft also outlined some efforts it's been making to work in the community to help third parties develop interoperable technologies and promote data portability between its products and others, notably between its controversial OOXML file format and other formats for exchanging documents. For example, the company is working on a new translator to read from documents in the Open XML file format to HTML. The company has posted information about the project on its Codeplex site. OOXML is the XML-based document format in Office 2007. The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) recently approved it as an international standard in a vote that is still being contested by some countries that took part in the decision. Microsoft has said it will support a rival file format and ISO standard, ODF (OpenDocument Format), in Office 2007 in a service pack to be released early next year. It has slated support for OOXML in Office for the next version of Office, code-named Office 14, but no official release date has been set for that product. Many expect it will be released next year as well, however. In another data-portability effort, Microsoft is working with Beihang University in Beijing to develop translators between Uniform Office Format (UOF), an open standard in China for office documents, and Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint so users have more options to open and save UOF documents in Microsoft Office 2007 and 2003. Also on Codeplex is information about a project to develop PowerTools PowerShell commands for OpenXML to enable IT managers to perform document management tasks. PowerShell is a command-line shell and task-based scripting technology for Windows Server that provides control and automation of system administration tasks. As part of its efforts to post information about connection protocols for its software, Microsoft also posted online Version 1.0 of technology documentation for protocols built into Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Nearly 5,000 pages of new technical documentation for the Office binary file formats -- doc, .xls, .xlsb and .ppt -- for Word, Excel and PowerPoint also went up online. Microsoft posted a preview of some of the documentation in April to receive feedback from the community about it. Monday's documents are the company's final version of that documentation. Microsoft has limped toward a more open development and data-exchange policy for some time. However, repeated fines from the EU for not complying with an antitrust settlement and increased competitive pressure from open-source software and Linux pressured the company to launch February's formal interoperability and expansive technical-documentation effort. #resourceLinks LI { DISPLAY: none } Sponsored Resource: Learn about storing and securing your data before disaster strikes.Sponsored Resource: Learn more about ultra light notebooks from Asus and the best warranty in the industry.Sponsored Resource: How much processing power do you need? Intel can help you decide.Sponsored Resource: Thinking about a new Laptop? Lenovo has models to meet everyone's needs.Sponsored Resource: Get the truth about remanufactured ink. Learn more from HP.Sponsored Resource: Small budget, big impact. Create Brochures that pop with HP laser jets printers.Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/147736/ooxml_projects_bolster_microsofts_interoperability_efforts.html
The free office suite's support for Microsoft's XML-based Office 2007 file formats leaves much to be desired। I'm not embarrassed to admit it: I'm a big fan of Office 2007. I think Microsoft got a lot right with its latest release, starting with the ribbon interface and including any number of tweaks and improvements that make my day easier. I can't say I'm thrilled about the price of the suite, however; nor the countless SKUs to choose from. Plus, I'm also a big Linux fan. That's why I always try to keep my eye on the current state of OpenOffice.org, the open source office suite founded by Sun Microsystems. OpenOffice.org 3.0 has just entered public beta, and it promises plenty of improvements from the previous version. Mac users, in particular, will be pleased with the new native Aqua UI. Unfortunately, however, the one feature that I was really looking forward to on the Windows side -- compatibility with the Office 2007 XML file formats -- could still clearly use a lot of work. As an experiment, I saved a simple Word 2003 document in Word 2007 format. Office 2007 opened it just fine, but OpenOffice.org Writer only got as far as the first two lines of the text; instead of skipping the next line, the rest was truncated. An Excel 2007 template fared no better. OpenOffice.org Calc preserved labels, numbers, and formulae; macros, embedded graphics, and page layout options disappeared. A plain .xlsx file created with the same template yielded identical results. I'm very disappointed to have to say it, but OpenOffice.org's support for the Office 2007 file formats simply isn't ready for prime time. I haven't had time yet to do a full review of the suite, but the tests I tried were extremely basic import/export operations on documents that were not in the least bit complex. Unfortunately, the beta OpenOffice.org struck out. It's strange, if you think about it. Wasn't the whole point of XML file formats for Office to make the documents more compatible with other software? Isn't XML a self-describing, human-readable file format that should make reverse-engineering a breeze (compared to the old, binary Office formats, at least)? And isn't OOXML, the Office 2007 file format, a public ISO standard?But then, if you've been following the news, you know that there's more going on with OOXML than meets the eye. Not to mention the fact that Office 2007 itself reportedly doesn't conform to the published standards.The final release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is still a few months away (and, to be fair, the developers do not recommend the current beta release for production use). There may still be time to get involved and help iron out the bugs with Office 2007 support -- but I doubt it। For now, my recommendation remains the same: If you're an Office 2007 user, like me, you'll probably want to keep saving your documents in Office 2003 format -- at least until OpenDocument becomes more mainstream. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,145667-pg,1/article.html
On Tuesday, Microsoft released Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Office 2008 for Mac, designed to add stability, security, and performance enhancements to the suite of office applications. The update features suite-wide fixes, as well as improvements to the individual applications that make up Office. Microsoft says the service pack will improve performance when you type text into a text box, shape, or chart element. A more-intelligent Remove Office tool will no longer search for copies of Office in a Time Machine backup, while another fix provides for proper layer positioning with inserted PSD files. Office 2004 applications could quit unexpectedly when users tried to copy content into them from an Office 2008 program; Service Pack 1 fixes this bug. Word 2008 changes: Improvements to the word-processing application include a set of new business card templates that work in Publishing Layout view. Among the fixes to Word, the Service Pack will properly apply the Customize workspace background setting in Publishing Layout view and Notebook Layout view to new documents; correctly apply font formatting changes to content when you use the Repeat command; and allow characters such as hyphens to display correctly when the font formatting is changed to Small Caps. The update also fixes a number of problems with Notebook Layout View. Excel 2008 changes: Service Pack 1 restores chart formatting options available in previous versions of Office and improves the spreadsheet program's ability to alert you to potential compatibility issues when you save the workbook in a file format compatible with previous versions of Excel (including Excel for Windows). Changes made when you move or resize the formula bar will now be retained. Microsoft also improved support for secondary displays. PowerPoint 2008 changes: The presentation software now remembers when you fix a broken movie link and then save your file. In addition, the update fixes speed and stability issues when printing, while making it easier to see and drag static guides. Microsoft introduced a set of new AppleScript classes and commands for creating scripts that select and perform operations on selected objects. Users can also now apply transitions to slide masters. Entourage 2008 changes: The update fixes a vCard bug that prevented Entourage from exporting cards without photos. It also improves Microsoft Sync Services stability, fixes problems with hyperlinks, gains an updated definition file for more effective junk e-mail filtering, and retains original received dates and times of imported messages. The e-mail client will now skip bad messages when it's connected to POP e-mail accounts so that it can continue to download remaining e-mail messages. The update prevents duplicate contacts and calendar events after syncing with an iPhone or iPod touch for the first time and now renders HTML signatures correctly. Office 2008 SP1 is available now as a download from Microsoft's Web site or via Microsoft Auto Update. Service Pack 1 is the second update released by Microsoft since Office 2008's debut. In March, the company issued Office 2008 for Mac 12.0.1 which offered security and stability improvements for the productivity suite. Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,145805-pg,1/article.html
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