Brian Jones & Zeyad Rajabi: Office Solutions

So when Google turn up at a TC meeting and comment about the spec being something that they can't implement are they representing themselves or the corporation?

Stephen pointed out a while ago that IBM have also implemented the spec in Lotus Quickr 8, although I've yet to take the time to look at how far they have got. The product documentation states that you can import OpenXML files into Lotus Quickr without the need for Office on the PC doing the importing.

http://notes2self.net/archive/2007/08/07/lotus-quickr-8-amp-openxml.aspx

Well, you are right that it is a heck of a lot better than the ODF spreadsheet support, which seems to be nothing but grabbing the text out of the document.  I'm betting that Rob Weir doesn't blog about this feature.

I think there might be a lot of users who are afraid to switch to the Office 2007 because of the new UI.  Those types of people are also the same type of people who would be afraid to download the compatibility pack for 2003, fearing that it might "mess up their machine".  

These people don't care about the format itself, they just don't want to change the way they work.  For example, I had to search for the fields option several times before I could remember where they were in the Ribbon.  Some users just don't want to have to deal with that.

Those who are not afraid upgrading are aware that there are people out there who are, so are still saving their formats as 2003 for the benefit of the others.  I know in my office there are a handful of us who are using 2007, but since the bulk of us aren't, we save our docx files as doc to share them.

This will change, but there is a lot of inertia in companies ("why invest time and money for the new Office when the one we've got is working fine?"  You'll probably find a lot of companies running Office 2000) and home users ("you mean I've got to relearn everything?").

I suspect that is just one of many reasons why we aren't seeing that many files out there.  I'm sure Rob would love to say it's because of the OOXML to ODF converter, and the lack of docx is because everyone's converting ;)

Brian,

The weird thing is that it has now reduced to 3380 when I search.

I also found that Websphere Portal can convert Office 2007 documents to HTML automatically:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wpdoc/v6r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.wp.zos.doc/wpf/dcs_info.html

DB2 Content Manager V8.4 supports Open XML - http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21288972

Maybe you can list these as Open XML apps as well ;) At this rate, IBM will be hogging the list.

Well it looks like the following orgs are using xlsx:

Bayer

www.stockholders-newsletter-q3-06.bayer.com/en/bayer_regions_Q3_06.xlsx

State of West Virginia

wvde.state.wv.us/materials/STEP7Allocation2007-08.xlsx

Washington State Board of Education

www.sbe.wa.gov/GraduationRequirementsDatabase1.xlsx

State of Idaho

www.pte.state.id.us/Forms_Publications/Agriculture/FFA/American%20Honorary%20Teacher.xlsx

Kentucky Board of Emergency Services

kbems.kctcs.edu/Senate%20bill%2066%2008%20Apps%20Received.xlsx

University of North Carolina

ils.unc.edu/courses/2008_spring/inls261_001/materials/task04.spreadsheets/Formulas_practice.xlsx

University of Oregon

https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/dspace/bitstream/1794/4956/1/patron-1.xlsx

East Hampshire Council (in the UK and within Lotus Notes, for extra comedy value)

www.easthants.gov.uk/allservices.nsf/0/F35E89A101CBF23F802573D00033AEA2/$File/Summary+June+06.xlsx

There were what looked like a bunch of other universities, government departments etc around the world too, but I got bored of looking.

It will be interesting to see what this looks like in a year's time.

I certainly know some of our users are using xlsx, mainly for >65K row support.

Gareth

Interesting -

Opera flags www.meerlytalking.com as blacklisted. Never had Opera put up a notice like that before.

Probably their ISP supplies unscrupulous people with web access.

I can't see the big deal though. The most complex formula in that sheet is what was available in Lotus 1-2-3 circa 1986; it doesn't even use named ranges, which were available then.

Aren't the precalc'd values stored with the cell numbers anyway?

One still cannot rename the columns so that a formula such as =sum(Huckabee) can be written with "Huckabee" clearly at the top of the column. Sure one can use row one, place names in the columns (as is done here) but then everyone has to be careful not to rename the "Huckabee" range, or change the row 1 entry to "Paul."

A look at the sophistication of the .xlsx sheets out there suggests that most users posting their stuff could have done quite well with 1-2-3. I'm a bit hesitant to open the russian and chinese sourced files to see what they are like.

yeah, that is something - displaying simple spreadsheet data, great success! Do you honestly think, that displaying this spreadsheet is the hardest thing a developer could face when attempting to implement at least a tiny part of the over-6000-page-specification non-ISO ECMA-pay-per-validation OOXML format? I bet they (google) will stop right there or soon after, since OOXML defined the way it is done now is a developer's worst nightmare (or they have at hand a sizeable bunch of spare cheap monkeys willing to dig in with improving OOXML support in google).

I have read a number of blogs posts and articles recently that demonstrate the groundswell of support

Im jestem starszy tym trudniej mi uciec od stwierdzenia, że świat jest pełen hipokryzji. Czasem to, aż

Un po’ di tempo fa ti ho parlato del nuovo formato documentale Office Open XML e del suo cammino nel

With the ballot resolution later this month, the temperature is high around the issues on Open XML.