Plugins for Microsoft Office for OpenOffice Documents?

DeBaas asks: "We are all in favour of getting Open Standards in place so that we can happily use Open/Star/K Office or whatever without the nagging problem: The Microsoft Office users cannot read our files correctly. Much of the focus is on providing filters to be able to make and read Microsoft Office files. However, should it not be the other way around, as well? Would it be feasible to make an open source project providing a plugin to MS office so that it can read and write in our preferred open format. Sort of a 'save as open document standard'. Is there a legal problem?, a technical problem? (is it already possible?) I would love it if I could send documents in OpenOffice knowing the other site can actually use and see it the way I meant to, even with MicroSoft Office."

Comments

A nice idea, but ..

[McCarrum]

I'd love to put openoffice on my machines in my somewhat large (and unnamed for the usual reasons) organisation. We've discussed it at the executive level, and the sole reason for staying with MSOffice is *other* organisations.

We rely on communicating with government, military and corporate entities, and their standard is Office. Period.

Whilst the import functions on openoffice are very good, they have to be (from a business critical aspect) absolutely 100% compatible -- and when you're dealing with multi-chapter doc files which use 90% of Word's capability, well, from my testings inhouse, I can't guarantee that level of accuracy. Images can move around, hide text, etc.

What I've done is start a different tactic within the organisation. All documents are PDF unless they require collaboration on the document. If collaboration is required, I'm now looking into a web-based solution (via our portal). Now, this does produce new challenges, but it does break the '.doc' monopoly.

Another damn important point is XML. With MSOffice moving towards their own XML, and with movement on producing an open standard for XML documents (slashdot article | actual link), this may be the approach that ends this problem. But it's going to be some time yet.

This is going to be a slow moving issue. I recommend we all relax, keep working on this, and slow and steady will win the race ... eventually.