MS to change Office file formats

[tedster]

This is just a bit scary to me - are we ready for .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files?

Microsoft continues to slowly trickle out bits of information about its Office 12 suite. On Thursday the company will announce that it plans to make XML-based file formats the default in the version of Office due to ship in the latter half of 2006...

The new Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats will be designated as .docx, .xlsx and .pptx, respectively. Microsoft is referring to the family of new formats as "Microsoft Office Open XML Formats."

[eweek.com...]

[bill]

I've read that this new format will be a boon to interoperability, but it's hard to imagine the MS will give up its hold on the proprietary Office file formats. That's been a huge lever for them to maintain their 'customer loyalty'...if you've got complex Word templates and documents you don't want to edit them with anything but Word, right? This XML file system will be 'open', so technically Open Office can edit them just as well. I guess the backward compatibility issue will keep customers loyal for a while.