How to read and write Word 2007 .docx documents in Debian and Ubuntu
Can you believe this bullshit? In Microsoft's new Word 2007, the .doc format has taken a back seat to .docx. Luckily there's a way to handle these files in Open Office, the free, open-source office suite -- at least for the Linux version. Novell had an ODF Converter that works on .docx word processor documents ... and this Linux Planet article shows you how to take the .RPM Novell package and convert it to a .DEB package that can be installed in Debian and the various Ubuntus.
I imagine a future version of Open Office will support .docx natively, but for now, there's this solution. Or ... you could tell people NOT to use .docx, stick with their old MS Office software or, for the love of god, just start using Open Office, AbiWord/Gnumeric, KOffice, or even Ted.
Soapbox time: I support the move to the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF), which is native to OpenOffice 2, and I hope it goes forward. I'm naturally skeptical about Microsoft's own open-document format, OpenXML, simply because having a company generally opposed to open standards creating and controlling an open standard is counterintuitive and probably counterproductive.
And like it or not, at this point Microsoft's .doc and .xls file formats for Word and Excel, respectively have pretty much become universal -- with many non-MS programs able to read and write them in most cases. That's probably why MS created the .docx format in Office 2007 -- they need to give users a reason to purchase yet another version of Office that they probably don't need. Most Word and Excel documents (or, if you prefer, and I do, word-processing documents and spreadsheets) are fairly simple and don't need a whole new generation of features and formatting. It's nice if you need it, overkill (and costly overkill at that) if you don't.
Now mind you, this is coming from someone that reads an occasional spreadsheet if it comes preloaded with data, and uses word processors for WRITING. I don't generally drop photos, tables, spreadsheets, other graphics, et al., into my documents. I just write it and post/send it where it needs to go. Some people use Open Office (and MS Word, too) to produce publication-quality documents, and I say more power to you, but for the rest of us, we don't need any new proprietary formats that prevent us from freely exchanging documents and being able to actually open, read and edit them.
The days when everybody needed to have Word and Excel -- the branded versions -- on their PC, or risk not being able to do their work are long, long past. And that's why we need ODF. I'd love to switch the default in my Open Office Writer from .doc to .odf -- and that day is coming, methinks, sooner than later.
Comments
If you are out travelling, at an internet cafe or simply in a hurry you could also try the docx to doc service over at
http://www.docx2doc.com
Upload .docx and get .doc back within a few seconds. Due to popular demand there is a small fee for the first .doc, but then you get free, unlimited usage. Good value for the money :)
Posted by: dag | June 22, 2007 1:51 PM
I took a look. It's $5.
If it helps you, the user, out, that's great.
I'd e-mail the Word 2007 user and say, "Stop this .docx shit -- you're killing me." And I'd save $5.
As for Microsoft, nothing will send people running away from Word and the .doc format quicker than the company itself abandoning it.
Posted by: Steven Rosenberg | June 22, 2007 5:15 PM