The Importance and Challenge of Microsoft’s Office Collaboration

Last month Microsoft made a string of announcements about new “software plus services” that they are bringing to market, most notably Azure, Windows 7 and Office Web applications. What struck me was the sheer volume of blogs, discussions and analyses that attempt to decipher Microsoft’s announcements and explain how the pieces could possibly fit together to benefit Joe the end-user. This ripple effect demonstrates the importance of collaborating with Microsoft Office files and the significant challenges users will encounter.

Let’s face it, Microsoft Office produces the single most important set of document types for which business users need the ability to collaborate, but its massive install base suffers from predictable version disparity. Today, it is common for an Office 2007 document to be given to someone who edits it in Office 2003 and passes it on to someone who needs to open it in Office XP. And when Office 14 is released in 2010, it’s safe to assume there will still be users of Office 2000. Collaboration would work seamlessly if all these Office versions had the same file format, but they don’t!

With Office 2007, Microsoft introduced new file formats that are not backward compatible (.xlsx, .docx, .pptx).  This means Office 2007 formatted documents must be converted to be viewed or edited in earlier Office versions. Frustratingly, the new file formats have little to no benefit to end users, causing most Office 2007 users to save all their files as earlier Office document formats (.xls, .doc, .ppt). This way their friends and colleagues can view and edit their documents with less hassle.

Not surprisingly, Office 97-2003 document formats will continue to be the lingua franca of business and remain the common denominator most every PC or Mac user can view and edit. Therefore, when eXpresso releases its full support for Office files in early 2009, it will automatically convert all Office documents to these formats and give them all the real-time collaborative properties that eXpresso users have enjoyed with Excel since the beginning. Thankfully, eXpresso users won’t even have to think about formats.