New Formats in Office Service Pack

Office 2007 SP2, planned for the first half of 2009, will support Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) output and import/export of Open Document Format (ODF) files. The move will simplify maintenance of Office 2007 and aid its use in government agencies that employ PDF or ODF as archival formats. However, Office 2007 SP2 will not fully support the recently ratified international standard (formerly called Office Open XML, or OOXML) that Microsoft prefers.

PDF Support Merged Back In

Office 2007 SP2 will restore support for exporting PDF and Microsoft’s analogous XML Paper Specification (XPS) format. Many organizations have wanted support for PDF output in Office because the nearly ubiquitous PDF reader client and good graphics support makes it convenient for exchange of formatted documents between organizations and over the Web.

Office 2007 can actually output PDF and XPS today, but the feature requires a separate, free plug-in from Microsoft, or commercial plug-ins from other vendors (including Adobe). These separate plug-ins require more work for organizations to distribute and maintain alongside the suite. Microsoft had actually planned to integrate PDF and XPS support into Office 2007, but separated out these features before the suite’s Oct. 2006 release in response to Adobe’s objections on antitrust grounds. Adobe has since loosened its tight control of PDF, releasing the full PDF 1.7 specification to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and gaining ISO ratification as a standard in Dec. 2007.