Microsoft has released a ‘beta’ version of their Office 2007 (PC) file conversion app, for Mac Office 2003 and X users.

Sadly though, it is hampered by being an incredibly poor gesture toward appeasing Mac office users. Some of the many things wrong with the release:

• It only converts Word docX files - no Powerpoint or Excel formats are supported.
• It ‘converts’ the docX file to RTF, meaning you lose nearly all formatting and embedded objects
• It is a standalone app, meaning you have to run it on files, instead of using an ‘open/save’ dialog in your Office apps
• It installs a small app that requires 8,000 files in it’s package. Seriously.

So Office 2007 has been available for some 18 months from beta to final, and the Mac BU is supposed to be mere months away from a final version of Office 2008. And this is what we get - a semi-functional, non-integrated ‘converter’ that barely works?

This does not bode well for the next version of Office, does it?

Read more on the Mac BU Blog.

PS: Good thing that NeoOffice and OpenOffice already support these features, eh?

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