Office PC 2003.... Aarrg

[Benjamin Amsaleg]

That's it !

I received my first company memo created in Office 2003 for PC with those
stupid security management function. Can't open it in Office X. Any work
around?

 

[Mickey Stevens]

No, Office for Mac applications cannot open Office 2003 documents protected
with IRM
<http://www.microsoft.com/office/editions/prodinfo/technologies/irm.mspx>.
If you want to see support for IRM in a future version of Office for, it is
essential you formally submit your request. In any Office X application, go
to Help -> Send Feedback. Otherwise, click on this direct link to enter Mac
Product Feedback:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/feedback/suggestion.asp>

 

[Len Ford]

Mickey,

With all due respect, this shouldn't be something that Mac users
should have to present to the MacBU. Office compatibility between Mac
and PC should be part of their internal agenda. I can understand some
features and functions being platform specific. However, the IRM is
not platform specific. IRM in Office is a shift in application
philosophy. I can't imagine Redmond saying, "Make this feature PC
only. We'll make the Mac people beg, scream, or threaten us for
adding this feature."

Len

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Office compatibility between Mac
and PC should be part of their internal agenda.

:->
I read an article about that recently. The MS representative in the
interview mentioned that the problem had all their attention.
On windows, people can open such documents in IE6 thanks to a plug-in.
This solution will probably not be available for the Mac users and there
is no guaranty that the next version of Office will be able to open
these documents either (which does not mean they're not working on it,
just that there is no guaranty).
Anyway, that's what I understood,


Corentin

 

[Len Ford]

Interesting. Because, I find this IRM setup to be very similar to the
XML formatting issue. No one had to lobby for it, though. I hope it
won't become an 'issue' for cross platform usage. If it does, I can
see more and more people drifting from Office and looking for
alternatives such as OpenOffice and Mellel for word processing. Both
are either free (or inexpensive) and both offer older Office
compatibility to some degree. Well, maybe not Mellel just yet, but I
won't be surprised if it starts to catch up in the next year.

It would be very good to hear someone from the MacBU chime in on this
discussion.

Thanks, Corentin.

Len

 

[Jim Gordon]

Hi Len et al.,

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is being pushed heavily by greedy large
organizations that have used their power to ram through the Congress the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I think this law is a horrible thing that
should be immediately repealed. 75 (+ a number nearly impossible to
determine) years is *way* too long for copyright protection. 25 years from
the date of creation is plenty.

As a result of the DMCA the large software houses are chomping at the bit to
get $$$ out of this. Adobe and Microsoft already have new expensive server
solutions ready to tackle this task. Because the servers are Windows only
the DMCA (and its companion TEACH act) has the effect of reinforcing the
monopoly status of the WinTel industry.

Control freaks love this sort of technology. At the moment DRM in Office is
an Office 2003 only toy. Because of the way it's implemented (it needs a
..NET framework server) there's no immediate support for it on Macs. Which
means that if Windows users want their documents to be able to be opened on
Macs they need to state that fact to Microsoft loud and clear. The URL for
such stating is:
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp

If Microsoft does not support Macs with this technology, chances are it
could be a flop regardless of how hard it is pushed by Uncle Sam. Both Mac
and Windows users need to let Microsoft know that cross-platform
compatibility is essential for their DRM plans to be successful.

A possible alternative to Office 2003 DRM is Adobe's Content Server.
Although it is not cross platform on the server side, it can produce
documents that offer additional features that work in Adobe Reader, which is
cross-platform. An incomplete overview of that product is here:
http://www.adobe.com:80/products/contentserver/overview2.html

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

All responses should be made to this newsgroup within the same thread.
Thanks.

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http://www.mvps.org/

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[Len Ford]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the clarification.

Len