Converting all old Office Files to 2007 format

[dwarkin]

Thanks, Bob, for the link. But: the "openness" You mention is not there: most
of the customers outside companys with large admin-departments do not know at
all that they are going to miss access to elder files by migrating to 2007.
Microsoft -as near to monoply in the field of windows/office- has a
responsibility for information-content worldwide. Imagine paper in libraries
would be unreadable after a decade.
The way to use elder versions of office is unrealistic: You know about the
different problems using several versions of office on one machine.
And what we users don´t understand is: why is it possible to use
2007-formats under office 95 then? What is more likely: customers having
elder files or customers having elder software?
If Your arguments would be right, Microsoft should at least build
virtual-machines for free-download containing a windows/office-version for
any given-up file-typ without licence-restricitons enabeling users at any
time to take those old files into the VM, have them converted to the
today-used formats by scripts and have them printed to PDF or tiff by scripts
for documentation-reason (compliance). E.g.: today there should be at least
to VMs downloadable without license-restrictions: one for DOS and WORD/DOS
and one for win95 or 98 and office95 including the converters for
2007-filetype and scripts for the jobs named. If we admins would build those
VMs, we would violate Microsofts license-provisons.
Microsofts Bill Gates told about the dream of merely managing information
with computers rather than printed on paper. Then, the minimum feature to be
delivered is that customers can trust live-long access without being told
"find own solution". As You compare it to cars etc.: there is a big
difference. Information from yesterday is needed today. Or even more:
information from ancient rome or greece, the bible and so on are still needed
today. An ancient car from rome is not.

 

[StefanKZVB]

Hi Bob,

what you say would mean you would have to have multiple old computers in a
company
with old Office versions just to keep the old files readable. You don't have
any warranties or replacement parts for these old machines, etc.

In the long way you would even have to
think about strategies on how to transfer unreadable files to the old
machines etc.
That's lots of unnessesary TCO and administrators will eventually hate MS
Office for all the
effort it takes just to read some old files...

Also I think in fact you almost get FORCED to upgrade to new MS Office
versions
either because you receive the new not prefectly readable file formats from
outside.
Or because you need to be able to fix security holes which are
even still in the old Office versions. Though these versions already got
fixed for years over years...

So I really want Microsoft to improve the transitions to new file formats.

BTW: IMHO the main reason why MS created new file formats and the Ribbon
was to get incompatible to OpenOffice. Because those "innovations" are
not really better, just different. Well, in the case of OOXML not just
different but
worse than ODF. But I guess you know about that.

Best regards

Stefan

 

[Graham Mayor]

As far as I am aware, all the old filters still work to *read* documents in
those old formats, though some are inhibited by a registry switch, which can
be changed - see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938810 and
http://news.office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=519.

Some of them will still *write* to those old formats, though there does not
seem much reason to do so.

Most of the older filters are available for download from my web site (cw
registry patches to make them available), though updates tend to contrive to
replace them again.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Stefan,

So you're saying that MS should keep all of the old companies in business, or take over for them when folks retire or sell and
provide parts too so that you wouldn't need to do any planning etc?

I'm assuming you have the same copy machines from 20 years ago, you have the same car from the 80's and no problem with getting
parts, or with running it with leaded gas, or that you have a new car/machine/appliance and fully expect the parts, Beta/VHS tapes
all to work just fine in your DVD drive? Shouldn't your DVD drive be able to read the files you saved to diskettes of any size, or
to a backup tape? <g>.

For my job, why MS, or apple, or Oracle, or others often raises the questions, mostly rhetorically of 'why did they do *that*!' and
some hair pulling, but in the end the job is to get the thing that someone bought up and running and to figure out how to make it
all happen, with whatever tools that are available. That's not to say that it's uncommon for administrators to be frustrated that
there are folks being upgraded who just 'won't move up to the newest and greatest' (it works both ways, depends a bit on where you
are in the food chain of a particular process).

The advantage of the new file format in general came out to be for many of our folks to be that the files were smaller

It depends on what you're looking for and what you need to get done I suppose on what things are positives and what things are
negatives.
===========
Hi Bob,

what you say would mean you would have to have multiple old computers in a
company
with old Office versions just to keep the old files readable. You don't have
any warranties or replacement parts for these old machines, etc.

In the long way you would even have to
think about strategies on how to transfer unreadable files to the old
machines etc.
That's lots of unnessesary TCO and administrators will eventually hate MS
Office for all the
effort it takes just to read some old files...

Also I think in fact you almost get FORCED to upgrade to new MS Office
versions
either because you receive the new not prefectly readable file formats from
outside.
Or because you need to be able to fix security holes which are
even still in the old Office versions. Though these versions already got
fixed for years over years...

So I really want Microsoft to improve the transitions to new file formats.

BTW: IMHO the main reason why MS created new file formats and the Ribbon
was to get incompatible to OpenOffice. Because those "innovations" are
not really better, just different. Well, in the case of OOXML not just
different but
worse than ODF. But I guess you know about that.

Best regards

Stefan >>
--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Dwarkin,


Most small companies I work with usually do more in depth research on a major software purchase transition and its impact than some
larger companies, as the expenditure of monies is often more 'personal'.

It isn't possible to use the Office 2007 formats with versions of Office older than Office 2000. In part, because of the life
cycle, trying to test with all possible older Windows, not just Office and add-ins, etc configurations isn't really cost effective,
or practical, as the older models aren't being updated any more.

You can certainly create virtual machines if you like, but not sure why it would be Microsoft's job to do it for you. Software
rarely comes with a lifetime warranty, and as far as ancient writings, there are folks that wish it was recorded on better 'storage
media', or that there were still people that spoke older languages so that there weren't multiple interpretations. Many of the
older disks, tapes, etc, may just from time, deteriorate to the point of being unreadable even in the correct device. It happens.
Of course, there are also folks who are new to computers who don't understand why it takes something as big as a 'desktop' machine
to get things done, or why it can't all be done on the pocketPC/Blackberry/Smartphone and for them that's where everything needs to
be, or with no prior experience, where it all starts

While folks have older data, much of it is moved forward with each new version if it's important, or transferred to newer archive
forms. That it may be inconvenient for you to be the one doing that, rather than having it done for you, without any cost, well...
And from experience, if MS did provide a converter, a VM, or scripts, folks would still find that to be problematic because it
didn't do this, or that, or why not this, or why wasn't every possible font included, or why is it different printing on my new
printer than it was on my 20 year old printer It's not possible to meet everyone's wish/want list.

As Graham points out the information can usually still be opened by using, at your risk, the old filters, even with Word 2007. And
the 3rd party converter collections often cost less than one copy of Office.

=============
Thanks, Bob, for the link. But: the "openness" You mention is not there: most
of the customers outside companys with large admin-departments do not know at
all that they are going to miss access to elder files by migrating to 2007.
Microsoft -as near to monoply in the field of windows/office- has a
responsibility for information-content worldwide. Imagine paper in libraries
would be unreadable after a decade.
The way to use elder versions of office is unrealistic: You know about the
different problems using several versions of office on one machine.
And what we users don´t understand is: why is it possible to use
2007-formats under office 95 then? What is more likely: customers having
elder files or customers having elder software?
If Your arguments would be right, Microsoft should at least build
virtual-machines for free-download containing a windows/office-version for
any given-up file-typ without licence-restricitons enabeling users at any
time to take those old files into the VM, have them converted to the
today-used formats by scripts and have them printed to PDF or tiff by scripts
for documentation-reason (compliance). E.g.: today there should be at least
to VMs downloadable without license-restrictions: one for DOS and WORD/DOS
and one for win95 or 98 and office95 including the converters for
2007-filetype and scripts for the jobs named. If we admins would build those
VMs, we would violate Microsofts license-provisons.
Microsofts Bill Gates told about the dream of merely managing information
with computers rather than printed on paper. Then, the minimum feature to be
delivered is that customers can trust live-long access without being told
"find own solution". As You compare it to cars etc.: there is a big
difference. Information from yesterday is needed today. Or even more:
information from ancient rome or greece, the bible and so on are still needed
today. An ancient car from rome is not. >>
--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

 

[StefanKZVB]

Hi Bob,

your opinions sound really strange to me:

Do you really expect from companies
with i.e. 1000 clients that pay about 200.000 $ for Office 2007 just for
licenses:
- to like to have a slower Office than before
- to have resources to retrain 1000 users
- AND to rely on third party tools to convert their old documents?
Actually MS is the one who should be able to write the best converters for
their file formats.
The old Office formats are/were closed formats,
and the specs for OOXML are 6000 pages while still being incomplete.
You can't expect a reliable converter from that.

So there's no reason why a third party could write a more trustable
converter than MS!
Quality of the conversion is the main thing a converter must provide.
Even a simple tool "convert2ooxml <filename>" returning
an errorlevel if conversion failed would be better
than every tool I know of for that purpose from MS now.

Really, if MS wants to keep its pole position in Office software
they have to take more care of the needs of their customers.

And not by increasing TCO unnecessary for migrations.
The folks out there get really annoyed being forced to upgrade
when having lots of troubles during and after transition.

It would be even ok if MS would provide a good converter
which you have to pay for. But it's not ok to release products,
tell how easy the transition is (i.e. Word Team blog) but
in fact that's all just marketing and customers have
to pay for third party products or each one has to reinvent the
wheel to migrate their old files in a reasonable and working way.

Best regards

Stefan

 

[StefanKZVB]

Hi Graham,

maybe it's me but i can't find the old converters on your web site.
Btw: Do they also allow to read ppt 4.0 files with Office 2007?

Thank you

Stefan

 

[Graham Mayor]

There are only Word filters on my site http://www.gmayor.com/downloads.htm ,
and Word has never opened PowerPoint files.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>

 

[njp]

I see it has been a year since this post, but i would like to know if
Microsoft is going to "fix" this problem or not? We are upgrading to Office
2007 now and just discovered it... after training everyone to use the Convert
button and avoid duplicate files!

 

[Lynn]

Hi there

As NJ (who wrote in Feb) we are just about to migrate from 2003 to 2007 and
have come across the anomoly of the convert option for network files copying
rather than replacing the files.

I carefully followed the correspondance but haven't seen a definitive answer
- is it a bug, is MS fixing it, or is it a "feature"?
Most grateful for support!
Lynn

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Lynn,

Are you referring to the Office 2007 migration tools doing the conversion or just opening a document in Word 2007 from a trusted/non
trusted network location?

Are the templates also on the server and are the documents being opened viat a hyperlink or Office Button=>Open, or ???

What version of Windows?

=============
Hi there

As NJ (who wrote in Feb) we are just about to migrate from 2003 to 2007 and
have come across the anomoly of the convert option for network files copying
rather than replacing the files.

I carefully followed the correspondance but haven't seen a definitive answer
- is it a bug, is MS fixing it, or is it a "feature"?
Most grateful for support!
Lynn >>
--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

 

[Lynn]

I am referring to opening a doc in Office 2007 and using the Convert button
from the Office button. The files can be local or on a server. When I use
the convert option, i get a duplicate, but when colleagues (with admin
privileges) do this, the file is replaced. all our normal users (non IT
people) do not have admin rights.
Is there a way to configure it to behave the same for all users (ie. no
duplicates)?
Thanks a million!
Lynn

 

[Lisa]

Lynn, I am experiencing the exact same problem you are. When you say a
colleague with "admin privileges" do you mean on the local workstation? I
have admin privileges on mine and I still see the two files.

Bob help!!

Thanks
Lisa

 

[Lisa]

Sorry just a couple more things to add:

Do a Convert on a PowerPoint or Word document on either the network or local
disk I end up with two files.
Do a Convert on an Excel file it converts and over writes the .xls file
We have the latest version with the latest patch.

This is going to be so confusing to end users when we roll this out. I am
confused for pete sake.