On February 21, 2008, I posted on Microsoft Interoperability Principles , which are designed to make our products more open and more available to the broader software community. Since that day, Microsoft has made several strides in this area, too many to recount here and now, but largely explained by...

SharePoint Conference was a very busy time for us. We were finally able to pull back the curtain on many of the capability areas of 2010, and for a lot of folks, this was the first opportunity to see what all the excitement is about. There is a lot of buzz about Office and SharePoint 2010, but there...

There's no doubt that Microsoft offers perhaps the best benefits package in this industry, particularly for those people with families. One of those benefits related to child birth is an extended paternity leave which goes well above and beyond what is minimally required within FMLA . After the birth...

I wanted to discuss a specific coverage area for Office 2007 SP2. I was recently directed toward the Acrobat Team blog , which is pointing out some of the differences between Adobe Acrobat 9 and Office 2007 SP2. As explained in the post, Adobe has worked hard to add value to the Office platform with...

Read this first if you're looking for SP2 details: http://blogs.technet.com/gray_knowlton/archive/2009/04/27/office-2007-service-pack-2-kiosk.aspx Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is getting quite a bit of attention, it is great to see. There has been world-wide traffic coming to my blog, and I’m sure that...

UPDATE: The links for the downloads for SP2 are in the process of replicating across mirrors for our WW download center. The download links are expected to be live at around 11:00AM PDT. Update: The download links for SP2 are now live . The Office development team has been pretty busy with the...

I was asked recently to comment on "security" of Office 2007. Conversations like this tend to unfold in a certain way… which is to play a fun game of Technology-Tennis, where we volley questions back and forth until we get at the root of the thing… although I've never understood why the grunting is necessary...

You'll see some blog traffic on this, so I thought I'd throw my own log onto the fire. I attended the ODF workshop yesterday, mainly to sit in the back and watch how things unfolded, but also to learn a little bit myself. I must say that after the conclusion of the event, I was quite happy about how...

Updated. April 28, 2009. Office 2007 SP2 is available for download. For more information: http://blogs.technet.com/gray_knowlton/archive/2009/04/27/office-2007-service-pack-2-kiosk.aspx For those of you who have been following the file format issue for a while, you'll recognize today's action by Microsoft...

The Open XML to DAISY Translator is available in release form now. You can download the tool and install it for yourself . It really is great to see this come to fruition. We are grateful for our partnership with DAISY, they have been very helpful in educating us on the best ways to support users with...

Interesting post here: http://www.oooninja.com/2008/03/openofficeorg-30-new-features.html "Microsoft Office 2007 file format support Microsoft Office 2007 (also called Office Open XML) file formats include .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx. Despite the similarity in names, these formats are significantly...

Ooh.. (should I say Ouch!): http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2008/03/how_many_defects_remain_answer.html . Once again Rob Weir is defeated (handily). "One of the constant themes over the last year has been the theme of panic. QUICK: You only have one month to find contradictions. QUICK: You only...

I used to live in Dublin (on Mount Street, just above Grafton Street)... I spent many, many days in the Oval pub just off O'Connell street, and I remember every one of those days fondly. Spending two St. Patrick's day holidays in front of the St. Patrick's day Parade in Dublin changed my perspective...

I can keep this post nice and short. Patrick Durusau has responded to some pretty harsh accusations from Rob Weir . (I guess I got the answer to my question about the disconnect within the ODF TC .) I guess Nick Tsilas should feel vindicated , at least a little bit. Ouch: "If you need further proof...

Picking up on the harmonization topic again , it appears that DIN has published an early draft of their report on translation between the two formats. The report outlines some preliminary findings in the feature differences between the format specs, and outlines some principles for what it thinks appropriate...

Updated: The Source Code for this tool is now available : Here's an interesting development (anyone for pun-free Fridays?) Intergen , a New Zealand based company , has developed a viewer for Open XML documents. You can get take a look at TextGlow for yourself: http://www.textglow.net/ . ...

"I recommend approval of DIS29500 as an ISO standard."- Patrick Durusau Mr. Patrick Durusau has again commented on Open XML . It is great to see at least part of the ODF camp coming around to consensus on a point which I've been saying for a while (a lot of people have been saying). Ratifying Open...

Yesterday was a big day, filled with lots of goodness on openness and interoperability . Today I thought I'd share some stuff that is a little different than my normal focus, but very interesting nonetheless. I realized last night (thanks to a not-so-gentle reminder from my wife) that I haven't gone...

Today is a very important day in the history of Microsoft; it's a moment with which I am very happy to be associated. If you didn't see the big news , you can read about it here . But if you just want to skip to the "What does this mean for Office and File Formats?" part, read on. To recap what was...

Patrick Durusau, Editor of the ODF specification(s) has offered another post in the vein of "can't we all just get along?" For all the discussion however, these documents from Mr. Durusau indicate a good path forward. This path is similar (the same) as what has been undertaken by DIN a while back. This...

This week Mike Walker announced a new "OBA Component Library " for Financial Services (OBA == Office Business Applications). If you're not familiar with OBAs , they are applications that are designed to help you use Office to get more out of the data center. We see countless situations where our customers...

http://interopvendoralliance.org/labs/ The Interop Vendor Alliance has been testing various scenarios with Open XML interoperability. If you're not familiar with the Interop Vendor Alliance (IVA), you can read about their activities here. They've done some interesting work in the area of identity...

I was pointed at a document created by the ODF alliance (with a creation date of Feb 6 th ) that discusses the recent dust-up on supported file types in Office 2003 Service Pack 3. While this was not one of our shining moments as a product, I was disappointed to see the amount of gross factual error...

Rob Weir is apparently offended that someone would suggest that ODF is controlled by a single vendor, going so far as to accuse Burton Group of some influence over the Open XML ISO voting process. He says: "Waiting until after February, after the DIS 29500 process concludes, to make corrections is...

Given my remarks about the current chair of the OASIS ODF TC , I thought I'd round out my ODF related discussion with something a bit more positive. In fact, I don't even have to add any commentary of my own, I'd just like the work to speak for itself. Patrick Durusau, editor of the ISO26300 and OASIS...