Office Archive

In a reversal, the state government of Massachusetts has thrown its support to Microsoft in an ongoing battle over office software formats and has launched an investigation into the state’s former IT chief, who had been championing open-source software. "The Commonwealth is very pleased with Microsoft’s progress in creating an open document format," said the state’s Administration and Finance Secretary Tom Trimarco in a short statement on Thanksgiving eve. "If Microsoft follows through as planned, we are optimistic that Office Open XML will meet our new standards for acceptable open formats."

Envelope printing is the tax return of office suite tasks. Everyone has to do it, and everyone hates it. Printing envelopes in OpenOffice.org, or in any office suite, is complicated because of printers. When you take printers out of their comfort space of letter or A4 size paper, they get cranky. Well, not cranky; they just have different rules for how they print, and it's not always obvious what those are. OpenOffice expert Solveig Haugland walks users through custom envelope creation and design.

"Microsoft dropped a bomb on ODF with its Ecma announcement. Today, it just bombed with the release of its promised 'covenant not to sue,' which it publicly posted just a few minutes ago. I was able to get an advance copy and do a line-by-line legal analysis, as well as a direct comparison to the covenant Sun gave to OASIS in support of ODF. There's no comparison."

"Yesterday, Microsoft let the other shoe drop in a two-pronged attack on the support that has been building for the OpenDocument OASIS Format. It's still far too early to say that the dust has settled, but I'll attempt to pull together here the most significant pieces of information that I've located since last night's post, and what it all means."

"When Office 12 arrives sometime in the second half of 2006, you may stop hating Microsoft Office. We looked at an early, private beta version of the suite and found a lot of improvements. Although the interface is radically changed, a lot of the underlying features and commands remain the same. We won't promise using Office 12 will be trouble-free, but so far it looks like a big step forward." Another look at beta 1 can be found here.

"While the move to ODF seems to offer clear benefits to the Massachusetts government and citizens in general, a move to ODF and a change in office application has significant accessibility implications for people with disabilities. Today people with disabilities are predominantly on the Microsoft Windows desktop. The proportion on Windows increases further when you look at employees of the Executive Branch of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. When it comes to the move to ODF for people with disabilities, there are two basic questions to ask." UPDATE: ODF turned into nothing but a forgotton political football in the Massachusetts Senate today when Senator William Morrissey pulled his own amendment to S 2256 and replaced it with something even worse.

Big guns in the software industry are massing behind OpenDocument as government customers show more interest in open-source alternatives to Microsoft's desktop software. IBM and Sun convened a meeting on Friday to discuss how to boost adoption of the standardized document format for office applications. The ODF Summit brought together representatives from a handful of industry groups and from at least 13 technology companies, including Oracle, Google and Novell.

After a month of news largely dominated by pro-ODF announcements, such as the release of ODF-compliant office suites, patent non-assertion pledges and the like, the opposition has just lowered the boom. And if they are successful, it's a big one.

Open standards and open source software got political on Monday when Linda Hamel, the general counsel for the Massachusetts Information Technology Department, suggested that groups that oppose the OpenDocument file format standard might be influenced by Microsoft. Hamel was testifying before the Senate's committee on Post Audit and Oversight at a hearing regarding the state's switch to the OpenDocument file format.

"Since we wrote a yarn about how opening OpenOffice was slower than a Lada full of elephants going uphill, we have had a few tips from our readers as to how to speed it up. The changes are not difficult and do seem to have an effect. We can't be certain how much this will affect the functionality but we pass these ideas on."

More handbrake turns concerning ODF. In an official statement, Microsoft has said it will not support OpenDocument in Office 12: ""We have no plans to directly support the OpenDocument format at this time." This contradicts reports from yesterday. Andy Updegrove, OASIS' legal counsel, responds, once again. Really, there's no need to turn on your TV to watch soap operas.

Corel apparantly did an impressive handbrake turn yesterday, because it confirmed it will support ODF-- an obvious shift in position seeing it only a week ago said it wouldn't. But that is not all on the ODF front today. Microsoft yesterday also opened the door to supporting ODF just a bit more. "Microsoft is working with a French company on translators to determine the scope of the problem in exporting Office documents to ODF. It sounds to me that support for "Save As" ODF in Office is a when, not an if." Andy Updegrove, who recently critized Corel heavily for not supporting ODF, replies.

The notion of "business intelligence," or easy access to critical company data, is one of the key areas for improvement that the company has identified for the next version of its flagship desktop software. On Monday, Microsoft shared some of its plans in that area, including the outlines of a new server-based system for managing Excel spreadsheets.

OpenOffice.org's latest update includes a database that matches Microsoft's popular and competing Access database, experts say. The stand-alone database rounds out the offering by bringing long-missing, important database power to users. Users will be able to create stand-alone databases, associated forms, reports and queries, much as with Microsoft's extremely popular and widely used Access database.