Office 2008 extension

J

jbdenberg

Does anyone know if the new Office 2008 will change their extension to
add the "x" at the end of every type of file (i.e. .doc becomes .docx
and .xls becomes .xlsx) like they did with their new Microsoft Office
Enterprise 2007 for PC's?
 
J

JE McGimpsey

Does anyone know if the new Office 2008 will change their extension to
add the "x" at the end of every type of file (i.e. .doc becomes .docx
and .xls becomes .xlsx) like they did with their new Microsoft Office
Enterprise 2007 for PC's?

Office 2008's "native" format will be .docx, .xlsx, etc., but will be
able to read and write .doc, .xls, etc.
 
J

John McGhie

Just to be quite explicit: It is not the "extension" that changes, it is the
"content of the file".

Office 2007 and Office 2008 will both save either .doc or .docx, .xls and
..xlsx.

The content of a .docx is an XML file. The content of a .doc is a Word
binary file.

The XML formats will be the defaults in the new version.

So just to be pedantic, it's not the "extension" that has changed, it is the
"content". Because the file now contains completely different coding, that
is indicated to software by using a new extension for the XML versions.

That's a very long-winded "Yes", isn't it? The reason I spend so much time
on it is that these answers will persist on the Internet for many years.
And there are a lot of people out there who do not understand file
extensions.

Some people think that if you change the file extension, you can enable the
old applications to read the new files. That is not true.

What is true is that the new applications can open and save in the old
format. And when they do, "Yes" they will use the appropriate extension to
signify what format the file is in.

Hope this helps


On 30/10/07 10:31 PM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "(e-mail address removed)"

Does anyone know if the new Office 2008 will change their extension to
add the "x" at the end of every type of file (i.e. .doc becomes .docx
and .xls becomes .xlsx) like they did with their new Microsoft Office
Enterprise 2007 for PC's?


--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]
 
B

Bob Greenblatt

And to further add to John¹s comments, the extension never mattered to any
office program on the Mac or PC. The extension is ONLY a means for the
operating system to associate a file with a program. ANY Office program (I
don¹t know about 2008) could open any file it knew how to process buy using
the application¹s File-Open menu command. The extension did not matter at
all. You could name an Excel file with a .ppt (or .doc or .xyz) extension,
and as long as you used File-Open, it would open and be fine.
 

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