A Microsoft spokesperson acknowledged the issue, but said it affects all XML-based data formats and is not specific to Office. The latest test version of Microsoft Office 2003 could cause problems for antivirus companies because the XML-based...
Ultimately, it should be possible to search across the entirety of a corporation's electronic records, be they stored as emails, databases, web pages, Word files, PDFs or whatever esoteric format the company may be using.
The goal is to have a Word plug-in for Office 2007 by the end of this year and translators for Excel and PowerPoint next year, said Jean Paoli, the general manager of interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft.
Although Microsoft Office document formats are the most widely used, the XML-based OpenDocument Format has emerged as an alternative with backing from IBM, Sun Microsystems and others, as well as high-profile government customers in Massachusetts...
Next year, the Open XML Translator project, done primarily by developers at French company Clever Age, intends to create converters that can translate between Microsoft's Excel and PowerPoint and the corresponding ODF file formats, Jones added.
The same group of Microsoft partners will now start work on code to translate file formats between Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentation software and the corresponding ODF files, said Jean Paoli, the general manager of...