Thanks, Bob, for the link. But: the "openness" You mention is not the most
of the customers outside companys with large admin-departments do not know at
all that they are going to miss access to elder files by migrating to 2007.
Microsoft -as near to monoply in the field of windows/office- has a
responsibility for information-content worldwide. Imagine paper in libraries
would be unreadable after a decade.
The way to use elder versions of office is unrealistic: You know about the
different problems using several versions of office on one machine.
And what we users don´t understand is: why is it possible to use
2007-formats under office 95 then? What is more likely: customers having
elder files or customers having elder software?
If Your arguments would be right, Microsoft should at least build
virtual-machines for free-download containing a windows/office-version for
any given-up file-typ without licence-restricitons enabeling users at any
time to take those old files into the VM, have them converted to the
today-used formats by scripts and have them printed to PDF or tiff by scripts
for documentation-reason (compliance). E.g.: today there should be at least
to VMs downloadable without license-restrictions: one for DOS and WORD/DOS
and one for win95 or 98 and office95 including the converters for
2007-filetype and scripts for the jobs named. If we admins would build those
VMs, we would violate Microsofts license-provisons.
Microsofts Bill Gates told about the dream of merely managing information
with computers rather than printed on paper. Then, the minimum feature to be
delivered is that customers can trust live-long access without being told
"find own solution". As You compare it to cars etc.: there is a big
difference. Information from yesterday is needed today. Or even mo
information from ancient rome or greece, the bible and so on are still needed
today. An ancient car from rome is not.
"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*