Extended document format support in Microsoft Office announced

The next release of Office 2007 - Service Pack 2 - which will ship in the first half of 2009 - will include expanded support for document formats including XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1.

With Office 2007 SP2, customers will be able to open, edit and save documents using ODF and save documents into the XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code. 

Collaboration with the open source community in the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net. will also continue 

Finally the roadmap for the newly ratified International Standard ISO/IEC 29500 (Office Open XML) has been announced. IS29500, which was approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in March, is already substantially supported in Office 2007 and the company plans to update that support in the next major version release of the Microsoft Office system, code-named “Office 14.”

The work on document formats is one element of Microsoft's ongoing work on interoperability, find out more at: https://www.microsoft.com/interop.