XML becomes the new file format for the next versions of Microsoft Office Word, Office Excel, and Office PowerPoint

By Jean Paoli¹

It is with great pleasure that we announced June 2, 2005, that the next versions of Office Word, Office Excel, and Office PowerPoint will contain a new XML-based file format that will be the default format for creating and saving documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

I truly believe that this announcement marks a great achievement in the evolution of Microsoft Office and something that the XML community has been looking forward to for a long time. We believe that the new formats, which we are calling the Microsoft Office Open XML Formats, will become a core part of the IT infrastructure for enterprise, government, academic, and other users. The new file format will enable everyone to improve file and data management and achieve greater interoperability and integration with disparate systems.

The new format will be fully documented and available ahead of the release date of “Office 12” so customers and partners can provide us early feedback. By taking advantage of XML, people and organizations will benefit from enhanced data recovery capabilities, greater security, and smaller file size because of the use of ZIP compression.

To help ensure the smooth transition to the new format, we are working hard to ensure that it is compatible with prior Microsoft Office versions. The new Office Open XML Formats refine, complete, and augment the formats we introduced for Microsoft Office Word 2003 and Microsoft Office Excel 2003. They also include a much-anticipated new XML File format for Microsoft PowerPoint. We are preparing updates that will enable Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003 to support the new file format. We are also dedicating engineering resources to the important job of preparing bulk converters that will enable users to convert documents saved in old binary formats to XML for those customers who want to make the switch. (These binary formats will continue to be supported in “Office 12”). Finally, we are also creating deployment tools, resources, and programs to assist our customers and partners so they will be able to take advantage of the new format capabilities before they begin receiving or creating files. I’m excited that we’ll be able to begin these discussions at TechED in Orlando in a matter of days.

Microsoft will publish the new Office Open XML Format specifications with the Open and Royalty-free license that we first made available for the Office 2003 XML file formats.

I'm personally thrilled and very proud that our Vision for XML on the Desktop is being realized. The consequences for customers and partners will be enormously beneficial.

For more information about our announcement, please visit the the Microsoft PressPass page.

Brian Jones, a program manager on the Office team has also established a blog dedicated to talking about the new file format. Visit Brian’s blog.

Sincerely,

Jean Paoli
Senior Director, XML Architecture
Microsoft Corporation

1. Jean Paoli is a senior director, XML Architecture at Microsoft, and one of the co-creators of the XML 1.0 standard with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). He has long been a strong and passionate advocate of XML and open standards. Jean jump-started the XML activity in Microsoft. He created and managed the team that delivered msxml, the software that XML-enabled both Internet Explorer and the Windows operating system. Paoli helped architect Office XML support and was instrumental in creating the newest XML Office application, Microsoft InfoPath. Paoli has been a significant player in the worldwide XML community since 1985, when the technology was then known as SGML. Until 1996, when he joined Microsoft, Jean was based in Paris, where he worked in collaboration with European research institutes, including INRIA in France. He designed for important corporations a lot of systems where SGML, in its approach of structuring and storing information, ensured the long life and easy exchangeability of the data across systems. His specialty has been building end-user markup editing tools. Jean is the recipient of multiple industry awards for his role in the XML industry, such as PC Magazine, Technical Excellence Award - co-creator of XML (1998), InfoWorld – Top Technology Innovators Award 2003, IDEAlliance - XML Cup (2004).