New ODF Plugins for Microsoft Office

Dec 07, 2007

Version 1.1 of Sun Microsystems' ODF Plugin for Microsoft’s Office suite now includes a multi-language package. A new version of the OpenXML-ODF Translator is now available for downloading from Sourceforge.

The Sun plugin gives users the ability to read and write documents in Open Document Format (ODF) in applications belonging to Microsoft’s office suite. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are the supported applications. Compatibility is guaranteed up to Office 2003, although there are plans to add support for the latest version, Office 2007, in the near future. In addition to this, the plugin also works with Office XP and Office 2000. Sun has now added Windows Vista to the list of supported underlying operating system platforms.

Sun Microsystems claims that its plugin is the only one of its kind with optional enterprise support: companies who wish to use the ODF ISO standard can sign a service agreement with Sun. The plugin is available as a multi-language pack in 16 different languages here.

Besides Sun, Microsoft has also developed a converter, founding a separate project to do so; the project is hosted on Sourceforge. The translator is subject to a BSD-style license, and support opening and saving of ODF files in Microsoft Office. Version 1.1 of the translator has been tested with Word, Windows XP SP2, and Microsoft Office 2007, as well as various combinations of Office versions on Windows Vista. The translator for PowerPoint and Excel still has the version number 1.0.

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