Office Open XML File Format Converter Editor's Review

Office Open XML Format Converter is a tool developed by Microsoft that allows you to convert the documents stored in XML format in a format that's compatible with Microsoft Office for Mac.

This tool has been designed in order to allow the Mac users to use the documents generated by Microsoft Office 2007 which uses the Open XML format besides the old DOC format. Those files have the following extensions: docx - for Microsoft Word document, and docm - for Word Macro-Enabled document.

Currently the application is in its beta stage of development, so it has minor instabilities. It also has some limitations like the impossibility to include the Macros and the Visual Basic content in its converted files, or the fact that the application converts into image files the Charts and the SmartArt graphics.

The output files from Office XML Format Converter are stored in the RTF (Rich Text Format). Those documents should be opened without any issue by Microsoft Word 2004, or Microsoft Word X.

The interface of the program is quite simple. It allows you to either drag a single document for conversion, or you can do a batch conversion of multiple documents. The interface also gives you the possibility to review the log of the conversion. The 'Preferences' panel is simple and it has just these options: the destination path of the output files, and the auto-opening of the output files.

Currently only NeoOffice includes the support for Microsoft Open XML. Novell has plans to include the support for Open XML in the future versions of OpenOffice.

Pluses: it allows you to convert the documents that use the Open XML format in RTF documents, it supports batch processing.

Drawbacks / flaws: it's a beta build, it has some technical limitations. Usually it can't convert the Open XML files generated by NeoOffice.

In conclusion: this application is a good tool for the people who want to maintain the interoperability with the files that use the Microsoft's Open XML implementation.

version reviewed: 0.1b