Microsoft lost an appeal to a patent infringement suit yesterday, regarding how the Office suite opens OpenXML documents. OpenXML has been the standard document format for Office 2007 (Windows) and 2008 (Mac), which has caused problems for users of earlier versions. A converter is necessary to open OpenXML docs in the earlier formats.
Microsoft is required to halt sales of Word using the current method of opening documents by Jan. 11, 2010, so expect an update soon if you own Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.
PC versions of Office 2003, 2007 and later were named in the suit. There was no mention of Mac versions, but it’s unlikely that Microsoft will leave the Mac version unchanged.
OpenOffice and other office suites support OpenXML, so expect it to be supported by Microsoft in the future. I use Pages and occasionally TextEdit myself. After years of using Word I thought it would be a tough change. It took about a week to get comfortable with Pages, Keynote and Numbers (iLife 09) and I won’t look back now. It’s almost painful to open up Word now.
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