Unofficial converter for Word 2007 documents released

A small developer called Panergy has released an unofficial converter that allows translation of Word 2007 .docx files into standard RTF files that can be read by Word v.x and 2004 for Mac OS X, as well as various other text editors.

Though the translation process is far from exact, Panergy claims "docXConverter makes sure that the contents, the graphics and the layout of the original docx document are kept in utmost fidelity."

Unfortunately, the converter had some issues with sample .docx files available from OpenXMLDeveloper.org in initial testing. It refused to translate the included .docx document stating that it could "only translate docx and doc" files.

The new software is dubbed docXConverter 1.0, and is available as a 3.6 MB standalone download.

As previously reported, Office 2007 for Windows uses a new file format that is not backwards compatible. Compatibility packs for Office 2003 and other Windows releases are already available. There will be a delta between general availability of Windows Office 2007 (January) and official converters for Mac OS X (expected late March/early April.).

For further coverage of this issue, see these articles:

• Working with Office 2007 documents under Mac OS X: Extracting text from .docx files, more
• Microsoft Mac BU: Office 2007 file converters for Mac OS X due in Spring '07; new Mac Office will natively read new formats

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