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 ?:-)" wrote:
Hi Dwarkin,
MS does have a bulk conversion tool for moving to Office 2007 as part of the Office Migration Planning Manager, from the Office 2007
Resource Kit
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office...5842f1033.mspx
It is more effective on Office 97-2003 files than on earlier versions.
DOS did not, without an addin, use truetype fonts for layout and Windows (and Office) do use those, so it's not a complete surprise
that the layouts of DOS Word files, not yet converted may not retain the layout.
There are a number of 3rd party services and products available to let you either do your own conversion or to do the bulk
conversion for you. As they generally have no printed reference for how the original file should have looked, the results are
sometimes a bit unexpected.
MS has not prevented you from accessing your files, it doesn't provide active support for older versions, generally after about 10
years, in part because a number of the older converters were written and owned by 3rd party companies no longer around. MS also has
not made it a secret of the timing when certain versions will revert to '3rd party' or 'owner responsibility' for compatibility 
Car manufacturers do not continue to provide parts for older cars after a number of years and trying to find even manuals for older
electronic gear, appliances etc is also a bit of a challenge (my Microwave is very low wattage by today's standards and I have to
manually calculate the cooking time as what's on product packages is based on 1100W values it seems - while it's inconvenient, I
don't expect the mfr's to support the older stuff g. In general, businesses do tend to migrate/upgrade at least once a decade I
would suppose g. Word 97 is a 1996 product and I still use Word v6 and even WordStar v3 on occassion. The last 'update' or life
extension for MS DOS Office versions was basically a Y2K measure.
MS has, as a default setting, to improve security, stopped access to some of the older file formats as they are more susceptible to
infiltration and attachment of malignancies that could affect your business.
==========
"dwarkin" wrote in message ...
We have about 40.000 files in older
Office-formats whereof, about 25.000 in Office 95, about 15.000 in
Powerpoint-Presentations and WORD-Handbooks. Where may I send them to have
them converted? All of our former letters, a large part of our presentations-
and handbook-archiv is in-accessible for Office 2007.
Besides, Graham, WORD cannot show WORD-for-DOS-files properly; so Microsoft
desides whether and how long we users are entitled to access our files after
years. This is contrary to any compliance worldwide.
Microsoft may learn: we users MUST have access to older files without
restrictions. There are two main reasons to use computers: to work more
effectively and to be able to access former datas without restrictions. As
long as I can open PDFs from any year but not my Office-files after 5-10
years, even the XPS-Format will not be intruduced in companies, at least not
in europe ;-(((((
I think we all would be very greatfull if microsoft would release a
compatibility-pack for older files very urgently and would focus this problem
in this and any later office-version as a main feature for
business-customers. This must assure two main features: to view any older
file-type (preferably even the olde DOS-files still stored in many companys)
and to convert those for further use.
--
Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP
*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*