Microsoft Office Word 2010

The Microsoft Office 2010 has been announced by Microsoft after two years of workarounds. Microsoft introduced Word 2010 at a very high-level, and a short summary of what you can expect is given bellow:


The way we work with documents has changed dramatically. In the past, individuals worked on relatively simple, local documents, from their office. Today, it is common for groups to work on rich, shared documents, from anywhere.

Given this shift, Microsoft has focused Word 2010 on dramatically improving document collaboration, graphics, and navigation…and then taking the richness and familiarity of Word, and putting it into the browser and onto the mobile phone. Yes, you heard it right, the Office 2010 also will reveal Web Office 2010.

Dramatically Improved Collaboration, Graphics, and Navigation

Simultaneous editing of Word documents à all the richness of Word with multiple people at the same time. Say goodbye to file in use dialogue. With Word 2010, you can co-author right within Word. You don't need to hassle with email attachments, or documents with names like ASP_final_2_reallyFinal_FINAL.docx. Instead, just open your document, and start co-authoring. You can see who else is working with you, and where they are editing.

Automatic offline editing and synchronizing of shared documents: when you open a shared document, Word automatically caches it so that you can edit it offline, and then Word will automatically sync your changes when you come back online. So if you need to work away from the office, you will no longer need to worry about saving local copies or manually merging your changes into the server document when you get back to your office. Word 2010 takes care of all of that for you.

All sorts of new graphical goodness: Artistic picture effects and easy picture editing, more SmartArt diagrams, and rich graphical and typographic effects on text is another added advantage of Office 2010.

A new navigation pane and search experience: Easily reorganize your document via drag and drop, and find stuff quickly with incremental search. You can stop copying and pasting huge sections of your document, quickly find your way around long documents, and you don't need to know exactly what you are searching for to find it.

Word in Your Browser and on Your Phone: The other big piece of Word 2010 is giving you the power and familiarity of Word everywhere you need it. In short, you will be able to view, navigate, and edit your Word documents from the browser and from your mobile phone without compromising your document's richness.

I know that was really high-level, but hopefully you have a sense for how Word 2010 will dramatically improve how and where you work on documents. Keep watching this space for more on Office 2010 :)

How to convert Docx to Doc

Microsoft’s newest versions of MS Office Suite support a new file format, which for Word Documents the suffix docx, but sadly this format is no longer compatible with older Versions of Word that used the doc suffix, a binary format that in most cases could only be read by Microsoft supplied software such as Word 2003 and older, or the free Word viewer available from the Microsoft website.

For compatibility purposes, converting a docx document to doc format is sometimes a requirement, either due to other parties not having access to the MS Office suite of software, or for backup and archival purposes, although increasingly major corporations and government departments are looking to update older documents to docx format.

Docx and doc are not in any way compatible, doc being a closed binary format that cannot be read unless the correct application such as MS Word or a filter for 3rd party applications installed. Docx by contrast is an open standard that can be unzipped using the built-in Windows unzip utility and the document.xml file extracted.

The process of converting from one format to the other essentially involves extracting the text, any embedded objects, and the style formatting, and then re-saving these in the other format. Users of MS Office 2007 are able to select the “save as” option in the file menu of Word 2007 and select Word 97/2000/XP as the preferred format.

Users of older versions of Word such as Word 2003 or Word 2000 will need to add the Microsoft supplied compatibility pack that enhances these versions and allows full open and save in docx format, thus allowing Word 2003 and Word 2000 users to convert a docx file to doc format easily.

Whilst docx has many advantages over doc formatted documents, it is generally less supported, with many of the more popular alternatives to Ms Office only now offering full or limited support. Although OpenOffice 3.0 and new versions of Abiword promise full support, WordPerfect support for docx is still imperfect, and only allows users to open files.

Converting a docx file to doc format if MS Office isn’t available is sometimes best accomplished using an online docx converter, specialist websites that upload the original docx file to their server, perform a conversion, and then make the new doc formatted file available to download. Care should be taken that confidential or secret documents are never uploaded to third party websites making this service less useful in the corporate or government sector.

More secure converters that can be installed directly on the user’s computer are available to purchase through major software retailers, or can be downloaded under a shareware type license that may give a free trial period. Better software allows conversion both ways and even into other popular file formats such as HTML or PDF.

Mac users can download free universal binaries that sit in the dashboard and convert docx to doc on the fly, although the preferred method suggested by Microsoft is to install Office 2008 for Mac, however several users have reported compatibility problems.

What is Docx format???

In January 2007 Microsoft released a new version of the market leading Office Suite MS Office 2007, followed a year later by the Mac version, MS Office 2008. Both suites introduced new file formats in response to criticism that Microsoft were not supporting efforts to make document file formats open and easily shared between users with different operating systems or using alternate office software.

In the mid 1990s a new text based document schema known as XML, a document markup language, was created with the goal of making complex documents more accessible, and which could be opened and read by a variety of software from editors to browsers, and everything in between. The docx format is Microsoft’s answer to the need for an open format that permits non-Microsoft applications access to the date contained within the document.

As part of Microsoft’s commitment to open file formats the docx format, which is just one of several new formats introduced by Microsoft, the responsibility for maintaining the format and ensuring standards compliance was passed to Ecma International, a non-governmental non-profit private standards organization in 2006. It has since been incorporated into several 3rd party applications mainly to assist with viewing, converting, or sharing word processed documents.

Docx differs from the previous default format used by MS Word, it is not a binary file that needs to be interpreted, instead, docx is a package of XML files that have been compressed together using the zip file format, a system used within MS Windows Explorer for its compressed folders functionality. When unzipped, the folder is found to contain several sub folders, all of which have at least one XML file used to store document properties, along with a single file under the ‘Word’ folder that contains the authored text.

The XML used within a docx file is specific to the needs of MS Office, but can be read in plain text using a text editor, and owning a licensed copy of MS Word or MS Works is not necessary to be able to read and print a docx document, although a word processor such as MS Word, AbiWord, or OpenOffice is needed to edit and then save a document in docx format.

Because the docx file is a zipped folder of XML files, it is possible for users to explore the folder structure and examine the XML code used. This also makes it easy for IT staff to make batch changes to multiple docx files, for example changing a corporate logo or the company registration number without having to open each file separately.

The open nature of the docx format makes it relatively easy for conversion software to be created that can be run on a local desktop or server, making the process of future proofing the archiving of documents less complex than in previous years. Management and storage costs are also reduced because the files are already zipped as an integral part of their schema.