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*