Microsoft expands formats supported in Office suite

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Microsoft Corp is expanding the range of document formats supported in its Office productivity suite.

The 2007 Microsoft Office system already provides support for 20 different document formats within MS Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

With the release of MS Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, the list will grow to include support for XML paper specification (XPS), portable document format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and open document format (ODF) v1.1.

Microsoft has defined a roadmap for its implementation of international standard ISO/IEC 29500 (Office Open XML). IS29500 was approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in March.

Microsoft is also committed to providing Office customers with the ability to open, edit and save documents in the Chinese national document file format standard, Uniform Office Format (UOF).

As UOF develops and achieves market adoption in China, Microsoft will distribute support for this format with Office to its customers in China.

The company has announced that it will be an active participant in the future evolution of ODF, open XML, XPS and PDF standards.

Microsoft will join the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) technical committee working on the next version of ODF and will take part in the ISO/IEC working group being formed to work on ODF maintenance.

The company will also be a participant in the ongoing standardization and maintenance activities for XPS and PDF.

“We are committed to providing Office users with greater choice among document formats and enhanced interoperability between those formats and the applications that implement them,” said Chris Capossela, Senior VP, Microsoft Business Division.

“By increasing the openness of our products and participating actively in the development and maintenance of document format standards, we believe we can help create opportunities for developers and competitors, including members of the open source communities, to innovate and deliver new value for customers,” he added.

Microsoft will work with the Interoperability Executive Customer Council and other customers to identify the areas where document format interoperability matters most, and then collaborate with other vendors to achieve interoperability between their implementations of the formats that customers are using today.

This work will continue to be carried out in the Interop Vendor Alliance, the Document Interoperability Initiative, and a range of other interoperability labs and collaborative venues.