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Microsoft Releases Pre-2007 Binary File Format Specs

Posted by timothy on from the in-exchange-they-can-read-the-odf-spec dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has released the specifications for the binary file formats used by pre-2007 Microsoft Office applications. They're accurate this time! Honest! While the documents are enormous (Word alone requires 533 pages; Excel runs over 1000 plus another 850 pages for the Office 2007 binary format), they hopefully will be useful to developers trying to create or extract information from Microsoft Office files (which despite their flaws, have been the de facto standard in many fields for some time now)."

11 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. I think the real question by bragolach · · Score: 5, Funny

    is WHEN are they going to release the source code to the Flight Sim in Excel 98?

    1. Re:I think the real question by MiniMike · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's actually hidden in the released documents. You have to go to a specific page of the Excel portion, and by starting at a specific line and skipping the correct numbers of lines between read lines, the spec will be revealed. The exact details are left as an exercise for the morbidly curious.

  2. The catch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    The released specifications are in a pre-2007 MS Office binary file format.

  3. Chicken and Egg by BobNET · · Score: 5, Funny

    The only problem? They released them in Word format...

    (Okay, not really -- someone must have realized that that would be silly.)

  4. Re:How freaking "open" of them... by smittyoneeach · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, but at least they offer the appearance of wanting to feel like changing...

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  5. are we clear ? by rs232 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Crystal clear to me .. :)

    --
    davecb5620@gmail.com
  6. It's a Trap! by stox · · Score: 4, Funny

    20 years ago, at what was the world's largest software project, we used to joke that if we wanted to ruin our competition, we would send them a copy of our specs. It looks to me that Microsoft got the same idea.

    --
    "To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
  7. Re:interesting... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 4, Funny

    Indeed. This is a strange new move by the borg.

    This reminds me the episode of House M.D. when he started acting nice one day and everyone began freaking out.

    You should chill out and think of this being more of a partial victory than an enemy's plan.

  8. Re:How freaking "open" of them... by Fallus+Shempus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Or you could just tab delimit it and stick a .xls on the end...

  9. Re:How freaking "open" of them... by hostyle · · Score: 3, Funny

    And at least you offered the appearance of what feels like an insightful post...

    --
    Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
  10. What makes you think so? by Bearpaw · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just because Lucy has always jerked the football away doesn't mean Charlie Brown won't get to kick it this time.