Office 2004 will lack XML support with Office 2003

[GroundZeroX]

According to this article, Office 2004 does not have support for Microsoft Word's XML features. It will support Excel in XML though. Now, while this may sound trivial, this is a huge hinderance to work flow when working with classmates or co-workers. My school sells all Office upgrades for $5 a cd, so everyone on my campus is probably all ready running Office 2003, and when it's time for projects to come along, compatibility issues will surely arise.

Microsoft has a FeedBack Page . I suggest we get as many people to go to it as possible, and try to get them to add the ability to at least be able to read XML in the shipping version, with full support for XML with either a .1 upgrade, or Service Release.

Why only the ability to read? Well, it is pretty late in the development of Office 2004 to try to demand that something like this is added with full functionality. I think it is far more practical to ask for this, because it is realistic.

[Randman]

The Compatibility Report tool lets users check whether a document will display as intended in various file formats. If a feature is not supported, users can choose to "fix" the incompatibility.

Wouldn't that take care of it?

[hmurchison]

As always Macintosh is second class Citizen. This is enexcusable. XML should have been built into the mac version concurrently with Office 2003.

Mac users are charged full pop for Office Software that is cripped. Methinks it's time for a competing Apple suite. Frankly I'm tired of limitations and doing things Microsofts way.

[uoba]

I was very ****ed-off when reading these. XML is all the rage within business. Every large corporation will spout the acronym continuously at present. The fact that Microsoft have failed to include it in the new Mac version, I think, could be a shrewd move by them (if it was intentional of course ).

[powermac]

M$ efforts on the Mac always seem Half-hearted. I have been wishing for competition on the Mac Platform for Office Suites for years. Lotus (IBM), and Apple should work on a suite (Please)!!!!

[GroundZeroX]

The compatability checker only checks compatability with versions of Office that have been previously released/ We need to get as many people to be behind this as possible. Get everyone you can to send in feedback. They said that the reason why the feature was left out was because of user feedback, now lets seeif we can get that turned around.

[monktus]

M$ efforts on the Mac always seem Half-hearted. I have been wishing for competition on the Mac Platform for Office Suites for years. Lotus (IBM), and Apple should work on a suite (Please)!!!!

But that's the thing, Microsoft's Mac software is actually pretty good, I'm surprised at them leaving XML support out of the new office. Apart from the fact that they make money from Office vX, their Mac software in my opinion is usually far better than its Windows counterparts. Outlook Express was the best mail client I'd used until I switched to Apple Mail (via Entourage admittedly); IE5 for Mac was pretty good when it was first released as 4.5 was heinous and 5 was far superior to Netscape 4.7, which was a swine to develop for. Of course it's not a patch on Safari or Firebird but it's still better than IE6; all the Office versions I've used are a bit bloated (as is to be expected), and I still can't stand Word but they're still nicer to use than the Windows versions, especially vX. As I said, Entourage is especially good.

So it will be interesting to see what Apple does. An office suite would be great but it could affect Microsoft development for OSX. Anyway, there are other threads on that... no XML for Office – bad.

[uoba]

I'd agree that superficially (well, maybe not superficially, but ergonomically) that Office for Mac is superior. But, it has always fallen short to it's Windows counterpart where it business facilities are concerned. As implied in my other post, maybe it's good for M$ to disallow these key hard-lined business features. this effectively stops business users (marketeers, admin, etc.) from using the Mac version when the Windows version offers much more than simple ergonomics and aesthetics over it's PC version.