Google Docs caves to MS Office 2007 file formats

Google has finally added support for Microsoft’s Word and Excel 2007 default file formats to its online Docs office suite. Mountain View confirmed the move yesterday. However, support for PowerPoint 2007’s file format remains out in the cold. The firm has added .docx and .xlsx to the list of file formats Google Docs accepts …

[Robin]

pdf images

Great, now all they need is to support the uploading of pdf images and it might be usable!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic

As MS Office 2007 with SP2 now supports ODF documents.

i.e. no need to support MS standard.

[James Grinter]

Useful to avoid the Microsoft Office tax

This is useful for handling the occasional Office 2007 document, as my copy of Office V.x otherwise works perfectly fine thankyouverymuch and I'd happily do without paying another wodge of cash to Microsoft.

(and there's always OpenOffice if I get really desperate!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple procedure

We have a simple procedure for anyone sending us anything in the bastard formats - first offence, a polite request to re-submit the offending item in the standard ODF format. Second and all other offences the item is returned marked defective - unreadable. It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

@Ivan

Very cute; but in many cases pointless as users (as where I work) have NO CHOICE in the office products they MUST use and in the standard formats which are supported internally. You may call them names, but the MS file formats and usage still outnumber the ODF and other open office formats world over and that's not going to change for a long time.

Myself; I only use open office at home and quite frequently get stuff from people using MS products and I can't read whatever it is. If they can't (or won't) resend in a format I can read, they're just out of luck.

[Nexox Enigma]

Where I used to work...

At some point the Helpdesk I worked at became unable to purchase versions of Office older than 2007, since MS more or less controlled our software vendor. High on our build checklist was changing the defaults back to the old Office formats, which we learned to do after a storm of "Why can't (I | My Research Assistant | This guy in Sweden | .*) open this document?" tickets rolled in.

Never saw a compelling reason for the new formats...

[Mike Barton]

ODF

"As MS Office 2007 with SP2 now supports ODF documents."

You obviously don't know so I will tell you. MS were up to their usual tricks by claiming to be ODF compatible and yet Excel with any formulas doesn't work.