This blog posting is one that I had in edit mode and almost deleted. I thought it might be insightful, but then I thought "nah". However this morning a coworker sent me an email asking if I could open an office attachment. It was an office word document, and all other documents worked just fine, but why not this one? Well this was a document created with the newer version of Microsoft Office 2007. And there are some differences. Differences that could cause persons to be in the same situation my coworker was in. I felt now was a good time to talk about the new office format. This format not only looks different in the appearance, but also inside the coding (under the hood so to speak) of it as well. Now I am not going to bore you with many technical differences, but there are a few points I would like to make. The new format saves files using Open XML, the XML stands for Extensible Mark Up Language. According to Microsoft, this format makes files about 75 percent smaller (compression) than older office formats. And XML was created to structure, store and to send information, as well as being compatible with the older formats.
As one of my former college professors use to say "who cares?" (Love ya Boz)
Well you might...someday. You see the problem may be from older formats to the newer one. A large number of AALS libraries are using an earlier version of MS office. Whether this is office 2003, XP or 2000. This is fine if you are sending an attachment to someone who has the latest version. But if they send you an office 2007 file you may have an error message stating that you need to install the Microsoft compatibility pack in order to view the file.
Just a quick blog to hopefully help with getting rid of a small irritant as you do your every day data processing projects.
I hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Rodney
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