Downloads of the Open XML Compatibility Pack have passed the 100 million mark, Microsoft revealed. The Redmond-based company is offering the Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats for users of Office releases prior to Office 2007 in order to enable them to not only open, but also edit, and even save documents, workbooks, and presentations in Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats. The software giant indicated that the number of Open XML Compatibility Pack downloads was illustrative of the increase in adoption of the OOXML standards introduced with the advent of the Office 2007 System.

“The compatibility pack is a manual download. It is not pushed through any update channels. In order for an end user to obtain it, they must visit the Microsoft download center, select one of the 35 available languages, and download the 26MB installer. To say it differently, more than 100 million people have had cause to seek out and download the compatibility pack for Open XML; likely due to their encountering a document stored in one of the formats,” explained Gray Knowlton, Microsoft Office Group Product Manager.

However, Knowlton mentioned that the number of downloads could in fact be larger. In this regard, he indicated that when compiling the download statistics, Microsoft did not count the copies of Open XML Compatibility Pack that were distributed through Windows Server Update Services or other update and software product management services. In this regard, Microsoft would only count one download to the WSUS server, while the pack would be in fact pushed to an unknown number of computers in IT environments. At the same time, the Redmond-based company did not keep track of the Open XML Compatibility Packs distributed by OEMs.

“Also worth noting is the conservative nature of this measurement. The statistic measures known, completed downloads, but we're also aware that in many cases, the download completes successfully even if we don't receive the feedback that it has. It is very likely the case that the number of actual end user downloads greatly exceeds 100 million. We're also not counting the # of downloads of the free viewers for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 either,” Knowlton added.

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats is available for download here.