Can You Ignore Microsoft’s Office 2007 and its XML content within your CMS?

Microsoft’s office 2007, besides having a different look and feel, has also taken a major step toward international document conformance by storing document contents in XML format (within a ZIP file). This is an improvement in many ways but if you thought things were complicated before, they have now doubled.

XML, as a text based format, is much easier to open and examine. Having it stored within a ZIP is now old hat (Java programs are done this way all the time) and it saves space.

But processing these files is now harder. Not only do these files have to be split apart, any software available before that could handle them now needs to be updated. You will need, in general, new software to handle the files. And it will be hard to issue edicts against the generation or dissemination of these files because they will often be created and transmitted without the user’s knowledge. How can that be?

Microsoft, in order to promote the adoption of this new standard, has provided free plug-ins into old versions of MS Office that automatically and pretty much invisibly handle these new file formats. A simple, free download from within Office will accomplish that. And all new versions of MS Office generate these new files by default. The only obvious difference with these files is that the extension has the letter x as in .docx. And if you receive and edit one of these files, guess what extension it will have when you’re done? It’s a bit like a virus.

OK, simple fix. Have everyone go to the Microsoft website and update your MS Office components. But if you’re an organization with say 500 users of MS Office, are you ready or willing to upgrade them all, even if it’s free. Don’t you think there might be a few problems in that process?

So these files are coming, and it’s very hard to stop them. Right now, in dribs and drabs, but soon major torrents. Can you ignore them? Not if your business depends upon MS Office documents.

What’s the answer? Get informed. Keep informed. Talk to your suppliers. Monitor how you’re impacted. Stay tuned. Maybe a universal viewer will be the answer for you?