In the second half of 2007, Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit will make available Office 2008 for Mac. The announcement was made at Macworld Conference & Expo 2007, following which, Roz Ho, general manager for the Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit, clarified some aspects of format compatibility. The issue revolves around the newly approved international standard Office Open XML Format.

"We're building file-format converters that will allow Mac users to access Office Open XML Format following the general availability of the 2007 Office system at the end of January. We will release a public beta version of the converters in the spring of 2007, and final versions of the converters will ship six to eight weeks after Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is available. For now, we recommend that Mac users advise their friends and colleagues using the 2007 Office system to save their documents as a "Word/Excel/PowerPoint 97-2003 Document" (.doc, .xls, .ppt) to ensure the documents can be easily shared across platforms," revealed Roz Ho.

In the meantime, Mac users can turn to third party solutions such as TextEdit that has delivered Open XML converters before the Mac BU. Roz Ho downplayed such alternative solutions arguing that they are limited to just reading the basic data comprised in the file. She additionally explained that Microsoft correlated the development of the file-format converters with the lockdown of the 2007 Office System bits.

"We spent the last year and a half preparing and planning for our own development of file format converters for Office for Mac. This process included support work of a rich and compatible XML parser, code to understand the new package structure, and beginning work on reading and writing early development versions of the file format. Now that 2007 Office system for Windows is being released, we are working to complete compatibility with the released formats, and we will release converters once they have been tested thoroughly," added Roz Ho.

Mac users will be able to access a beta version of the file-format converters in spring 2007. Microsoft informed that it will initially offer support only for Office 2004 for Mac. Office 2008 for Mac will not require converters as the office Open XML Format will be native.