Office 2007 and Acrobat 8.x

[emanon]

Prior to Office 2007, I had Office 2000. Office 2000 coexisted very nicely
with Adobe Acrobat 8.x, thank you very much. I could click on the top bar of
Word or Excel and create a PDF for distribution without a problem. I could
also click on a file name and painlessly create a PDF for distribution. I
could also click ona group of files and publish them combined as a single
PDF document.

This no longer is the case. My Create PDF button has totally disappeared
from the top bar of all my office aps and I cannot creae PDF documents
through point and click methods. The only way to do this is by printing each
document as a PDF. PDFs created this way may be combined after the fact, but
it makes for a real inconvienent workflow.

Before it is suggested, I am also posting this on Adobe's Acrobat forum for
help there. I see this more of a Microsoft problem, however, as that was the
last change made to the computer.

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

Acrobat does not support Office 2007 or Vista yet.

--

JoAnn Paules
MVP Microsoft [Publisher]

~~~~~
How to ask a question
http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

Funny, I see this as another DSO problem just like your last question.
You probably won't see how this applies either, but quoting from
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=333504 :

"Acrobat 8 shipped prior to Microsoft Office 2007. Therefore, we are
currently actively testing Acrobat with the shipping version of Office
2007 and Office 2007 files. In the first half of 2007, we expect to
issue a free Acrobat 8 patch that will provide support for Office 2007.

Acrobat 7.0 and earlier will not support Office 2007 or Office 2007 files."

 

[emanon]

Thanks to you both. I got the same info from Adobe on this, and yes, G-N-O,
I have no problem understanding it. I am waiting on Microsoft to supply the
details to Adobe so a patch can be released. (I won't sidetrack on the
unrelated issue you mentioned.) With CS3 coming from Adobe soon, my guess is
the interoprability will be adressed in that version.

I have also uncovered another related issue with Word *.docx files. These
cannot be placed in InDesign CS2. This could be a major prolem in my
workflow. Normally, Word is used for simple text entry. All formatting,
addition of graphics, etc is done in InDesign. If Office 2007 files are
saved in the native "preferred" format, they are unusable by my bread 'n
butter application. Major stumbling block. Again CS3 is coming soon and I
don't have too many Office 2007 files coming in. Hopefully Microsoft will be
collaborating with other vendors to get around this issue of file
incompatibility. In the mean time, back to Notepad or ASCII text conversion
of DCX files.

Is it the Microsoft implementation of XML that is causing these issues? If
so, it seems that not enough advance notice of the specs was given to other
vendors.

I know these are a lot of issues, but this is my first day with Office 2007.
As a seasoned Office 2000 user, I did not anticipate so many behind the
scenes problems. I had hoped the transition would be seamless.

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

Thanks to you both. I got the same info from Adobe on this, and yes,
G-N-O,

I have no problem understanding it. I am waiting on Microsoft to supply the
details to Adobe so a patch can be released. (I won't sidetrack on the

Adobe has had all the information they need for quite some time. In
fact, it has been available to all add-in developers since the public
Beta 2 mid last year came out. Other suppliers of Office add-ins have
managed to be 2007 compliant by now, but Adobe hasn't.

I have also uncovered another related issue with Word *.docx files. These
cannot be placed in InDesign CS2. This could be a major prolem in my
workflow. Normally, Word is used for simple text entry. All formatting,
addition of graphics, etc is done in InDesign. If Office 2007 files are
saved in the native "preferred" format, they are unusable by my bread 'n
butter application. Major stumbling block. Again CS3 is coming soon and I
don't have too many Office 2007 files coming in. Hopefully Microsoft will be
collaborating with other vendors to get around this issue of file
incompatibility. In the mean time, back to Notepad or ASCII text conversion
of DCX files.

There is no need to collaborate for Microsoft. The DOCX file format is
now controlled by a standards body and the entire documentation is
available to everyone. It simply is a complex file format that will take
vendors quite some time to implement. I wouldn't expect any other vendor
to support the DOCX format for the next half year or so.
Your problem can be overcome relatively easy though. If you go in Office
button menu, Word Options, Save, you can switch the default save format
to the 97-2003 file format (DOC), which should be no problem for
InDesign to understand.

Is it the Microsoft implementation of XML that is causing these issues? If
so, it seems that not enough advance notice of the specs was given to other
vendors.

There is no Microsoft implementation of XML. The new file formats are
built using XML. The spec though wasn't adopted by a standard's body
until December (getting something as complex as this standardized is a
lot of work and took around a year), which means that most other vendors
probably didn't start implementing it until then.

I know these are a lot of issues, but this is my first day with Office 2007.
As a seasoned Office 2000 user, I did not anticipate so many behind the
scenes problems. I had hoped the transition would be seamless.

Office 2007 is the first Office release in a long time that brings
actual change and innovation. The downside of that of course is that the
transition is not as seamless as it could be, especially for early
adopters that are going to 2007 now. Once all the other vendors have
caught up with Office 2007 (prob. in a year or so) it will be much more
seamless.

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
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