Chaos Pavanred's Blog ….. Exponential Error

Microsoft’s file format changes

Ah! Microsoft again!
They know that the majority of population has reached a point where if suddenly the sun rises and god says there will be no more .ppt, .xls and .doc , believe me the world will almost stop.
That is the way microsoft is ruling.

But well that day did come though. But, in a discounted fashion - Microsoft one fine day realized that the software that they were providing was not good enough (Yeah fair enough you have to improve with every version) but still, changing the file formats, which 'Einstein' came up with this idea.
doc became docx, xls became xlsx, ppt became ppx, mdb became accdb etc etc.

Come on. It’s easy to say, you can convert the older files to the newer formats and its listed all over the place. But less spoken about the reverse of it.
There are hacks to make the newer versions convert to older ones, hacks which meddle with the registry to make a file formats work.

If you say why do you need the older formats and why not move on with the newer xml formats. Obviously, it seems better when microsoft lists down so many positives about the newer formats.

Now, apart from the normal problem which i am sure all would have already experienced, you make a presentation, and just before the presentation you realize that system you about to present on has an inferior version of office. Dooms day.
Now, that’s a subtle problem, To get to the much irritating problems - Now the file format of Microsoft access changed from .mdb to .accdb (.mdb is easily convertible to .accdb). Doesn't sound so bad until, you realize that .accdb is not recognized by Microsoft visual studio 2005. If you have Visual Studio 2005 and you just upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007, and say you want to develop a small application involving both of them, then you are left with these options -

1. Buy Visual Studio 2008 - that’s about US$799 only.
2. Forget about the $329.95(for the upgrade) you spent and revert back to the older version.
3. Use Adobe air.
4. Stop developing your applications.
5. Go pick a pirated copy of VS 2008. Now who's responsible for this?

There are websites which made use of this misfit. zamzar is one of them, popular for their online file format conversion, including converting the xml formats to the older formats of office.

Alls well that ends well, Microsoft wins, people must have got used to the newer formats by now.