Re: Proprietary formats FAIL

I'm not sure how it's a ruse from Microsoft to force people to upgrade old versions of Office when it's only Outlook that will no longer open .doc and .xls -- not Word or Excel which will keep compatibility and will have to keep compatibility. Indeed, I'm not sure how it could possibly be a ruse from Microsoft to stop supporting legacy formats which are still widely employed; it's much more likely that customers, upon seeing that an as-yet mythical version of Office which does not support .doc, would swap to an Office suite which *does*. You can't force people to upgrade by dropping support for something they still have. You force them to upgrade by introducing something new that they need (such as .docx and .xlsx back in the day). Your logic is idiotic.

I'd also comment that .docx and .xlsx, for all their flaws (although most of those in my experience boil down to Open/LibreOffice being terrible at supporting them) are built on XML, as is ODF. Six of one, half a dozen the other. Simply being "supported by open source office suits" -- an entertaining image in itself -- isn't enough to condemn something.

(As for "EPIC FAIL", Jesus man, give it a rest and have some dignity.)

Re: Proprietary formats FAIL

"This is yet another reason why Governments and Schools etc should standardise on ODF and not the ever changing and obsoleted MS office formats."

Yeah, yeah - so you keep saying. Maybe you should consider writing to your MP or someone who might have some input on that, rather than pissing into the wind on an IT site's comments page? I seriously doubt you're going to have any effect here. Just a thought ...

Re: Proprietary formats FAIL

He can't contact his MP and he thinks his MP is an MS shill...

Re: Proprietary formats FAIL

Got to supplement that measly MP's income and meagre expense account somehow.

Re: Don't be at all surprised if...

You know there are such things as batch converters for just this sort of situation. But then it seems most comments are about whining instead of doing something practical.

Re: This makes no sense at all.

"Why would it need "support" for any kind of files? Surely it just sends them as binary blobs and doesn't need any specific support for them at all?"

"Support" in this context means "Allows you to output mails/contacts into this format". It has nothing to do with sending/receiving attachments in any format.

Erm, you have heard of virtual machines right?

What is your universal access with long term viability proposal?

"I am a professional writer. I have several novels, articles and short story collections in DOC format"

And this is why it matters that the article mis-represents the MS statement.

The professional IT people understand that the article was false, and that nothing important has happened.

But readers who don't have that kind of knowledge are frightened and cheated.

Find a real problem

Nothing you've described will be affected in the least by the changes in Outlook. All of those files embedded in your Outlook PST would be just as usable if you installed Office 2013 as before. You aren't likely to import them to or export to them from Outlook. Outlook doesn't much care with is in a binary attachment beyond security warnings. You don't need to convert anything. The most current versions of Word and Excel will still work with those files just fine BECAUSE IT MATTERS IN THOSE APPS AND NOT IN OUTLOOK. They dropped the functionality from Outlook because it hardly mattered and only added to the work load that could be better applied elsewhere.

And converting those files to an open archival format like PDF is a trivial task that can be automated for far less than the costs you suggest.

And how is this MS forcing someone to pay for an upgrade? "We stopped supporting a thing scarcely anyone does." This is neutral at worst. The small number attached to elderly software aren't likely to make the leap anyway and those who are already on more recent versions simply aren't affected by the change and it doesn't factor into whether the new version is attractive.

Re: Bit dramatic

Was the decision to set up your business like that also your responsibility?

Re: Bit dramatic

"A bit sensationalist? I don't think so."

Except you don't have to do any of that (although I'd recommend it long term) as support for old Office docs isn't actually going anywhere at all.

Re: Bit dramatic

It is if the only place where you edit .doc and .xls files is in Outlook. Judging by the whining and puling in this thread, plenty of people use Outlook as their sole word processor, and even more think that because Microsoft have removed support for .doc files from Outlook it's their way of forcing you to upgrade. Because obviously the best way to get people to upgrade is to release software that doesn't read your old format. I imagine the conversation goes like this.

"Hey, Jake, Microsoft have just released a new version of Word*!"

"Does it read .doc files? I've got hundreds of them."

"No, they removed support."

"Shit, those sneaky bastards, forcing me to upgrade by dropping support for all the files I need!"

Makes perfect sense to me.

* This is a mythical future release of Word that doesn't support .doc files, an eventuality that seems distinctly unlikely but is, in principle, possible.

Re: ReadMe.txt

You can't really be angry from Langley if you bother to actually read something! This is insufferable!Something must be done! It's those… up to their usual tricks, etc.

The article is badly written and does not provide context and examples of what is meant: you cannot import things like contact details from .xls, .doc, etc. That really isn't a big deal: csv, which is a far greater data exchange format than either is still supported for those times when you do need to import a load of addresses, something that I imagine few users have ever done.

I am not a fan on MS Office and personally think the Outlook is a fairly poor mail program - Mr Orlowski gave a thoughtful analysis of the decline in good mail programs a few years ago which is worth searching for - and the awful ribbon interface has been sent to try us but I don't have too many problems with OOXML as it leads to considerably more compact files than what went before. That said I hate XML with a passion and those who defend its openness as somehow magical even more; they should actually read the source of some of these files sometime to realise that without documentation all file formats are abominable. The only saving grace for XML is the number of libraries that facilitate reading and writing it.

Re: Dear Microsoft

And you are being forced to upgrade to Outlook 2013 because....?

@Sean Timarco Baggaley

Re: "Office 2003 formats are standard."

I did not mean - or say - that they were official standards. I said that they were standard. As in they are "standard for those clients and their clients, and their clients' clients." They are the standard format used by the particular "cloud" of interacting companies here.

Official standards or not official standards are completely irrelevant. What is a good archive standard or not is completely irrelevant. What matters to these businesses is simple: that they be able to continue doing what they are doing exactly as they are doing it without retraining, fighting with clients/suppliers on formats or spending wodges of cash to buy another copy of something that works just fine right now.

"Standard" in this sense is "everyone within the cluster of these interconnected companies uses it." That's the only standard that matters. They give zero fucks about what is or is not an international standard or what other methods they could use for long term archival. Change costs money, training and a lot of political capital wrangling back and forth.

Unless there is a compelling reason – read new "must have" features or something that provides a demonstrable return on investment you won't convince these companies to splash out on upgrades to Microsoft's latest "pay for the same song, but on CD this time!" grab.

Regarding your "it's IT, for crying out loud, obsolescence is guaranteed" crack: stuff it. I'm not in the mood. That isn't something that SMBs accept – I believe the word "cop out" is generally used – and it's not something I accept either. Fuck planned obsolescence and fuck each and every spineless asshole that supports the tactic. Fuck them with a lacquered bus.

You want more money, provide more functionality. Give a return on investment or just fuck absolute miles of off.

Even "just" nerfing the ability to import and export from Outlook using these older formats is enough to cause a lot of troubles at two of these companies – not to mention their suppliers, clients, etc. I don't need, or want the headache. There's no good reason for it. There is no value to me or to my customers behind this move.

So fuck Microsoft. And fuck everyone who supports them in this too.

Re: Dear Microsoft

@nuked

I have at least two clients that absolutely require the ability to import and export things from outlook on a regular basis. They exchange information with their clients (and suppliers) in this fashion all the time. They have a massive Office 2003 install base - across the whole "cloud" of companies involved - and this would basically create a wall between anyone using Office 2013 and previous versions.

So what are the alternatives? Downgrade new installs to 2010? Possible; but it involves fighting with India for each bloody install. Especially since these tend to be smaller businesses, so not using volume licensing. (Certainly not using SA.)

I can migrate to a new mail client – and probably LibreOffice – which involves finding a new mail client. A lot of research, a pain in the ass, but the likely route out of this.

Alternately, my clients can reward Microsoft for being douches by giving them more money for a product they don't want (Office 2013) to replace a perfectly functional product (Office 2003) that they actually like.

Lovely choices.

Much ado about nothing

I find myself wondering if you understand what importing and exporting means in this context. It doesn't mean if someone using Outlook 2013 receives a message with a Word 2000 document attached, that they will be unable to save the attachment and open it in Word.

At worst, if you want export a set of Outlook 2013 contacts to a Word 2003 file, you add an extra step by exporting it to DOCX first, then save it as DOC in Word. Wow, that'll collapse the company for sure.

If there are really lots of businesses that will be cripplingly affected by this, it is an opportunity for companies like Aspose to offer a solution that adds the functionality into Outlook 2013. But the slightly roundabout method is free.

But why is this a big deal at all? You say you're in IT and yet you seem to be completely unaware that Microsoft makes a free add-on for older versions of Office to equip them to handle DOCX and XLSX files. It's been around since Office 2007 launched. I have many cheapskate customers in field that operate on a shoestring who still install Office 2000 on new workstations and the File Format Converter is just part of the install procedure.