OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Office converter tool released

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Microsoft's new Office suite Office 2007 uses a new document format, OpenXML. OpenOffice.org on the other hand uses another xml-based format Open Document Format (ODT) which is ISO-certifed.

As previously reported, Microsoft and Linux-distributor Novell are working together to develop a better cross-platform interoperability between Linux and Microsoft based software. As part of the deal, the companies now released a "translator" tool, or converter, which allows to convert files from OpenOffice to Microsoft Office and vice versa. While OpenOffice already supported previous versions of Microsoft Office, OpenOffice documents could not be opened directly in Microsoft Applications.

Now, the Open XML Translator, which has been released last week, enables conversion of documents from one format to the other and is available for anyone to download and use at no cost.

As a plug-in for Microsoft Word the tool provides the choice to open and save documents in ODF rather than the native Open XML format. The tool may also be plugged into competing OpenOffice  that use ODF as default format.

The  Open XML Translator has been tested on Microsoft Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP and has been localized into Dutch, French, German and Polish. In addition, Novell has announced that the tool will be natively implemented in its next version of OpenOffice.

Currently the tool only supports Word/Writer documents. Future releases will also serve Spreadsheet/Excel and Impress/Powerpoint formats.

This new tool/plug in is of special importance for professionals who work with different Document Formats, or whose clients provide one format while their tools support the other. In especially, the Open XML Translator allows professional translatorsand language service providers to use free and Open Source computer assisted translation (CAT) tools like OmegaT together with OpenOffice, thus saving license fees for expensive SDLX and Microsoft Office.

More Information Microsoft Press Release

Novell to launch MS Office/OpenOffice converter

OMEGAT: INTRODUCTION AND TUTORIAL

OpenXML Translator: http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter

OmegaT: http://sourceforge.net/projects/omegat/

OpenOffice.org: http://www.openoffice.org/