On Mon, 2007-10-22 at 21:43 +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
It is worse than that, if and when docx becomes the default (or more specifically when people stop bothering to set Office 12 to save as the "legacy" format of .doc) then, if I understand the licensing MS has encumbered the new format with then it will actually be illegal for any Free software to open or change these files.
and almost as if it were a prophecy I had a client who operates solely on Mac's phone me up this afternoon to ask me how they are supposed to open some docx files that had been emailed to them. They have the most recent version of Office OSX, but the 2007 version is yet to become available.
So the answer seems to be at the moment, download a beta Microsoft utility that supposedly converts docx to RTF (and destroys a lot of formatting in the process), get someone with a Windows box and Office 2007 (or 2000,XP,2003 and the compatibility pack) to open,convert and return the documents or plead with the originator to resend in a different format.