My View on Microsoft Office Binary File Format validator (beta) utility - Post # 1

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What I tried? Sometime earlier i reviewed (tried) the new command-line utility Microsoft Office Binary File Format Validator (beta) – which helps to to validate binary file format files for the following files and applications: .doc files (Microsoft Word 97/2000/2003 and file formats supported by Microsoft Office Word 2007/2010), .xls files (Microsoft Excel 97/2000/2003 and file formats supported by Microsoft Office Excel 2007/2010) and .ppt files (Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/2003 and file formats supported by Microsoft Office PowerPoint2007/2010).

Interesting facts that I observed:
+ Utility runs without requiring an installation of Word, Excel or PowerPoint on the computer.
+ Utility is supported on any computer that is running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later versions.
+ When you run Microsoft Office Binary File Format Validator Beta, it either validates the complete file or fails at the first point where the scanned file does not comply with the particular binary file format open specification.

Installation/Uninstall:
Installation/Uninstall is straight forward. You can download appropriate one for 32-bit or the 64-bit operating system. On successful installation, you can notice a shortcut Microsoft Office Binary File Format Validator Beta launcher to the Start menu in Microsoft Office Binary File Format Validator in All Programs. Also the uninstallation works great for me.

How to validate & what’s the outcome?

+ When a nonconformance issue is located in the scanned file, Microsoft Office Binary File Format Validator Beta writes out a detailed log file, in XML format, that helps you locate and debug the error.

+ Let we see how to the Successful validation works: I tried the following at command line to validate “sample1.doc”:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\BFFValidator>bffvalidator.exe “C:\test\Sample1.doc”

I notice that the Command Prompt window message includes the location of the file that was scanned, the time stamp of when the scan was finished and the location of the log file.
PASSED at 07/12/11 10:14:19 Log at: C:\test\Sample1.doc.bffvalidator.07-12-11_10-14-19.xml

I looked at the .xml file (log file), which contains the following information

<BFFValidation path="C:\test\Sample1.doc" datetime="07/12/11 10:14:19" result="PASSED"> </BFFValidation>

Will continue the remaining in the next post about my further review on the same…