Hi Bob,
what you say would mean you would have to have multiple old computers in a
company
with old Office versions just to keep the old files readable. You don't have
any warranties or replacement parts for these old machines, etc.
In the long way you would even have to
think about strategies on how to transfer unreadable files to the old
machines etc.
That's lots of unnessesary TCO and administrators will eventually hate MS
Office for all the
effort it takes just to read some old files...
Also I think in fact you almost get FORCED to upgrade to new MS Office
versions
either because you receive the new not prefectly readable file formats from
outside.
Or because you need to be able to fix security holes which are
even still in the old Office versions. Though these versions already got
fixed for years over years...
So I really want Microsoft to improve the transitions to new file formats.
BTW: IMHO the main reason why MS created new file formats and the Ribbon
was to get incompatible to OpenOffice. Because those "innovations" are
not really better, just different. Well, in the case of OOXML not just
different but
worse than ODF. But I guess you know about that.
Best regards
Stefan
"Bob Buckland ?:-)" wrote:
Hi Stefan,
Yes, there are various reasons to need access to the old files. As I mentioned I have and still access files written over 30 years
ago. All of the old files remain readable by the versions of Office that created running under the operating system versions
available then.
No one *forced* anyone to purchase or a use a new version of anything and the transition out of old formats is announced years in
advance, which is pretty good in today's 'throw away' technology age http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle. That the companies
that wrote the old tools are no longer around or that there are potential security holes found in some of those older tools so that
they are discontinued, is just part of that product life cycle. 
Heck, I still have a case of 8" floppy disks I'll probably
never get to use because someone decided to change sizes g.
============
"StefanKZVB" wrote in message ...
Well, I understand MS does not want to support old formats forever.
On the other hand NOT supporting old formats and forcing customers
to use third-party tools to migrate old documents
actually increases the total cost of ownership for MS Office.
So simply discontinuing a file format is NOT customer friendly at all.
* * *
IMHO discontinuing a file format would be only acceptable if MS would provide
with every new Office version a good (!), easy and powerful tool to convert
ALL files
with not anymore supported formats reliably (!) to the new format.
* * *
The file converter tool provided in the 2007 ORK
does NOT meet these criterias, because:
- it does not convert the newly discontinued PPT 4.0 files
- it skips lots of files as unconvertable
- it has no option to convert to the same directories
not allowing you to have the converted files the same
file system rights.
- ...
Also for many customers there might be legal issues
why old documents must remain readable for decades.
Best regards
Stefan
--
Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP
*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*