Microsoft Office Open XML
Encyclopedia
Office Open XML is a zipped
, XML
-based file format
developed by Microsoft
for representing spreadsheet
s, chart
s, presentation
s and word processing
documents. The Office Open XML specification was initially standardised by Ecma
(as ECMA-376) and later by ISO
and IEC
(as ISO/IEC 29500).
Starting with Microsoft Office 2007
, the Office Open XML file formats have become the default target file format of Microsoft Office
, although the Strict variant of the standard is not yet fully supported. Microsoft Office 2010 provides read support for ECMA-376, read/write support for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and read support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict. Microsoft has stated that the next release of Microsoft Office
(version 15) will support both read and write of ISO/IEC 29500 Strict.
-based format for Microsoft Excel, which was incorporated in Office XP. In 2002, a new file format for Microsoft Word followed. The Excel and Word formats—known as the Microsoft Office XML formats
—were later incorporated into the 2003 release of Microsoft Office.
Microsoft announced in November 2005 that it would co-sponsor standardization of the new version of their XML-based formats through Ecma International
, as "Office Open XML". The presentation was made to Ecma by Microsoft's Jean Paoli
and Isabelle Valet-Harper.
Technical Committee TC45, where it was standardized to become ECMA-376, approved in December 2006.
This standard was then fast-tracked in the Joint Technical Committee 1 of ISO and IEC. After initially failing to pass
, an amended version of the format received the necessary votes for approval as an ISO/IEC Standard as the result of a JTC 1
fast tracking standardization process that concluded in April 2008. The resulting four part International Standard (designated ISO/IEC 29500:2008) was published in November 2008 and can be downloaded from the ITTF
. A technically equivalent set of texts is published by Ecma as ECMA-376 Office Open XML File Formats — 2nd edition (December 2008); they can be downloaded from their web site.
The ISO standardization of Office Open XML was controversial and embittered, with much discussion both about the specification and about the standardization process. According to InfoWorld
:
The same InfoWorld
article reported that IBM
(which supports the ODF
format) threatened to leave standards bodies that it said allow dominant corporations like Microsoft to wield undue influence. The article further says that Microsoft was accused of co-opting the standardization process by leaning on countries to ensure that it got enough votes at the ISO for Office Open XML to pass; although it does not specify exactly who accused Microsoft.
Richard Stallman
of the Free Software Foundation
has stated that "Microsoft offers a gratis patent license for OOXML on terms which do not allow free
implementations."
Holders of patents which concern ISO/IEC International Standards may agree to a standardized license governing the terms under which such patents may be licensed, in accord with the ISO/IEC
/ITU
common patent policy.
Microsoft, the main contributor to the standard, provided a Covenant Not to Sue for its patent licensing. The covenant received a mixed reception, with some like the Groklaw
blog
criticizing it, and others such as Lawrence Rosen
, (an attorney and lecturer at Stanford Law School
), endorsing it.
Microsoft has added the format to their Open Specification Promise in which
This is limited to applications which do not deviate from the ISO/IEC 29500:2008 or Ecma-376 standard and to parties that do not "file, maintain or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of such Covered Specification".
The Open Specification Promise was included in documents submitted to ISO/IEC in support of the ECMA-376 fast track submission.
Ecma International asserted that, "The OSP enables both open source and commercial software to implement [the specification]".
Part 1. Fundamentals:
Part 2. Open Packaging Conventions:
Part 3. Primer:
Part 4. Markup Language Reference:
Part 5. Markup Compatibility and Extensibility:
and Design Web Format
. Part 4 is to be read as a modification to Part 1, on which it depends.
A technically equivalent set of texts is also published by Ecma as ECMA-376 2nd edition (2008).
Part 1 (Fundamentals and Markup Language Reference):
Part 2 (Open Packaging Conventions):
Part 3 (Markup Compatibility and Extensibility):
Part 4 (Transitional Migration Features):
The standard specifies two levels of document and application conformance, strict and transitional for each of WordprocessingML, PresentationML and SpreadsheetML. The standard also specifies applications descriptions of base and full.
/SC34/WG4, and was approved in June 2009 to go forward as a recommendation for the first amendment to Office Open XML.
Applications able to read documents compliant to ECMA-376 edition 1 will regard ISO/IEC 29500-4 Transitional documents containing ISO 8601 dates as corrupt.
s that can be used to represent electronic office
documents. The format defines a set of XML markup vocabularies for word processing
documents, spreadsheets and presentations as well as specific XML markup vocabularies for material such as mathematical formulae, graphics, bibliographies etc. The stated goal of the Office Open XML standard is to be capable of faithfully representing the pre-existing corpus of word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations that had been produced by the Microsoft Office applications and to facilitate extensibility and interoperability by enabling implementations by multiple vendors and on multiple platforms.
An Office Open XML file is a ZIP
-compatible OPC package containing XML
documents and other resources. That is, one can see the contents of an OOXML file, for example by renaming it to a .zip file and opening it with any zip tool. The actual .xml files can then be viewed in a web browser or a plain text editor.
Australia: Australia
's Department of Finance has released a desktop policy that required all agencies to adopt Office Open XML as the standard document format.
Belgium: Belgium
's Federal Public Service for Information and Communication Technology in 2006 was evaluating the adoption of the Office Open XML format. It already then confirmed that it would consider all ISO standards to be open standards, mentioning Office Open XML as such a possible future ISO standard.
Denmark: In June 2007, the Danish
Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation
recommended that beginning with January 1, 2008 public authorities must support at least one of the two word processing document formats Office Open XML or Open Document Format
in all new IT solutions, where appropriate.
Germany: In Germany
the Office Open XML standard is currently under observation by the Federal Commissioner for Information Technology ("Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Informationstechnik"). The latest release of "SAGA" (Standards and Architectures for E-Government-Applications) includes Office Open XML file formats in both its strict and transitional variant. The ISO/IEC 29500 standard may be used to exchange complex documents when further processing is required.
Japan: On June 29, 2007, the government of Japan
published a new interoperability framework which gives preference to the procurement of products that follow open standards. On July 2 the government declared that they hold the view that formats like Office Open XML which organizations such as Ecma International
and ISO had also approved was, according to them, an open standard. Also, they said that it was one of the preferences, whether the format is open, to choose which software the government shall deploy.
Lithuania: Lithuanian Standards Board has adopted the ISO/IEC 29500:2008 Office Open XML format standard as Lithuania
n National standard. The decision was made by Technical Committee 4 Information Technology on March 5, 2009. The proposal to adopt the Office Open XML format standard was submitted by Lithuanian Archives Department under the Government of the Republic of Lithuania
.
Norway: Norway
's Ministry of Government Administration and Reform
is evaluating the adoption of the Office Open XML format. The ministry put the document standard under observation in December 2007.
Sweden: The Kingdom of Sweden
has adopted Office Open XML as a 4 part Swedish National Standard SS-ISO/IEC 29500:2009.
Switzerland: In July 2007, the Swiss Federal Council
announced adherence SAGA.ch e-Government standards mandatory for its departments as well as for cantons, cities and municipalities. The latest version of SAGA.ch includes Office Open XML file formats.
United Kingdom: The UK has put out an action plan for use of open standard
s, which includes ISO/IEC 29500 as one of several formats to be supported.
United States of America: On April 15, 2009, the ANSI
-accredited INCITS
organisation voted to adopt ISO/IEC 29500:2008 as an American National Standard.
Starting with Microsoft Office 2007
, the Office Open XML file formats have become the default file format of Microsoft Office
. However, due to the changes introduced in the Office Open XML standard, Office 2007 is not entirely in compliance with ISO/IEC 29500:2008.
Microsoft Office 2010 includes support for the ISO/IEC 29500:2008 compliant version of Office Open XML, but it can only save documents conforming to the transitional schemas of the specification, not the strict schemas. Note that the intent of the ISO/IEC is to allow the removal of the transitional variant from the ISO/IEC 29500 standard.
The ability to read and write Office Open XML format is however not limited to Microsoft Office; other office products are also able to read and write this format. SoftMaker Office 2010
is able to read and write .DOCX and .XLSX files in its word processor and spreadsheet applications. OpenOffice.org
from version 3.0 has been able to import Office Open XML files. Version 3.2 improves this feature with read/write support even for password-protected Office Open XML files. KOffice
version 2.2 and later is able to import Office Open XML files. Other office products that offer import support for the Office Open XML formats include TextEdit
(included with Mac OS X
), iWork
, IBM Lotus Notes, WordPerfect
, Kingsoft Office and Google Docs.
ZIP (file format)
Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...
, XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
-based file format
File format
A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
developed by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
for representing spreadsheet
Spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...
s, chart
Chart
A chart is a graphical representation of data, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart"...
s, presentation
Presentation
Presentation is the practice of showing and explaining the content of a topic to an audience or learner. Presentations come in nearly as many forms as there are life situations...
s and word processing
Word processing
Word processing is the creation of documents using a word processor. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter.-External links:...
documents. The Office Open XML specification was initially standardised by Ecma
Ecma International
Ecma International is an international, private non-profit standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired its name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association changed its name to reflect the organization's global reach and activities...
(as ECMA-376) and later by ISO
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...
and IEC
International Electrotechnical Commission
The International Electrotechnical Commission is a non-profit, non-governmental international standards organization that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies – collectively known as "electrotechnology"...
(as ISO/IEC 29500).
Starting with Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007 is a Windows version of the Microsoft Office System, Microsoft's productivity suite. Formerly known as Office 12 in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006 and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007...
, the Office Open XML file formats have become the default target file format of Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
, although the Strict variant of the standard is not yet fully supported. Microsoft Office 2010 provides read support for ECMA-376, read/write support for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and read support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict. Microsoft has stated that the next release of Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
(version 15) will support both read and write of ISO/IEC 29500 Strict.
Background
In 2000, Microsoft released an initial version of an XMLXML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
-based format for Microsoft Excel, which was incorporated in Office XP. In 2002, a new file format for Microsoft Word followed. The Excel and Word formats—known as the Microsoft Office XML formats
Microsoft Office XML formats
The Microsoft Office XML formats are XML-based document formats introduced in versions of Microsoft Office prior to Office 2007...
—were later incorporated into the 2003 release of Microsoft Office.
Microsoft announced in November 2005 that it would co-sponsor standardization of the new version of their XML-based formats through Ecma International
Ecma International
Ecma International is an international, private non-profit standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired its name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association changed its name to reflect the organization's global reach and activities...
, as "Office Open XML". The presentation was made to Ecma by Microsoft's Jean Paoli
Jean Paoli
Jean Paoli was one of the inventors of XML. Along with Tim Bray and Michael Sperberg-McQueen, Paoli co-edited the XML 1.0 recommendation for the World Wide Web Consortium starting in 1997 and until at least 2008....
and Isabelle Valet-Harper.
Standardization process
Microsoft submitted initial material to Ecma InternationalEcma International
Ecma International is an international, private non-profit standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired its name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association changed its name to reflect the organization's global reach and activities...
Technical Committee TC45, where it was standardized to become ECMA-376, approved in December 2006.
This standard was then fast-tracked in the Joint Technical Committee 1 of ISO and IEC. After initially failing to pass
Office Open XML Intermediate 5 Month Ballot Results
During the standardization of Office Open XML, Ecma International submitted its Office Open XML File Formats standard to the ISO Fast Track process. After a comment period, the ISO held a ballot that closed September 2007...
, an amended version of the format received the necessary votes for approval as an ISO/IEC Standard as the result of a JTC 1
ISO/IEC JTC1
ISO/IEC JTC 1 is Joint Technical Committee 1 of the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission . It deals with all matters of information technology....
fast tracking standardization process that concluded in April 2008. The resulting four part International Standard (designated ISO/IEC 29500:2008) was published in November 2008 and can be downloaded from the ITTF
Information Technology Task Force
The ISO/IEC Information Technology Task Force is a body jointly formed by ISO and IEC responsible for the planning and coordination of the work of JTC 1...
. A technically equivalent set of texts is published by Ecma as ECMA-376 Office Open XML File Formats — 2nd edition (December 2008); they can be downloaded from their web site.
The ISO standardization of Office Open XML was controversial and embittered, with much discussion both about the specification and about the standardization process. According to InfoWorld
InfoWorld
InfoWorld is an information technology online media and events business operating under the umbrella of InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG...
:
The same InfoWorld
InfoWorld
InfoWorld is an information technology online media and events business operating under the umbrella of InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG...
article reported that IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
(which supports the ODF
ODF
ODF may be an acronym for:* OpenDocument format, a standard for electronic office documents** OpenDocument Fellowship, a volunteer organisation with members around the world to promote the use and development of the OpenDocument format....
format) threatened to leave standards bodies that it said allow dominant corporations like Microsoft to wield undue influence. The article further says that Microsoft was accused of co-opting the standardization process by leaning on countries to ensure that it got enough votes at the ISO for Office Open XML to pass; although it does not specify exactly who accused Microsoft.
Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
of the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
has stated that "Microsoft offers a gratis patent license for OOXML on terms which do not allow free
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
implementations."
Licensing
Under the Ecma International code of conduct in patent matters, participating and approving member organisations of ECMA are required to make available their patent rights on a reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) basis.Holders of patents which concern ISO/IEC International Standards may agree to a standardized license governing the terms under which such patents may be licensed, in accord with the ISO/IEC
IEC
-Organisations:* Independent Electoral Commission * Independent Electrical Contractors, a U.S. national trade association.* Institut d'Estudis Catalans , a Catalan academic institution....
/ITU
Itu
Itu is an old and historic municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. The population in 2009 was 157,384 and the area is 641.68 km². The elevation is 583 m. This place name comes from the Tupi language, meaning big waterfall. Itu is linked with the highway numbered the SP-75 and are flowed...
common patent policy.
Microsoft, the main contributor to the standard, provided a Covenant Not to Sue for its patent licensing. The covenant received a mixed reception, with some like the Groklaw
Groklaw
Groklaw is an award-winning website covering legal news of interest to the free and open source software community. Started as a law blog on May 16, 2003 by paralegal Pamela Jones at Radio UserLand, it has covered issues such as the SCO-Linux lawsuits, the EU anti-trust case against Microsoft, and...
blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
criticizing it, and others such as Lawrence Rosen
Lawrence Rosen
Lawrence Rosen is an attorney and computer specialist. He is a founding partner of Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a Californian technology law firm, specializing in intellectual property protection, licensing and business transactions for technology companies...
, (an attorney and lecturer at Stanford Law School
Stanford Law School
Stanford Law School is a graduate school at Stanford University located in the area known as the Silicon Valley, near Palo Alto, California in the United States. The Law School was established in 1893 when former President Benjamin Harrison joined the faculty as the first professor of law...
), endorsing it.
Microsoft has added the format to their Open Specification Promise in which
Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification […]
This is limited to applications which do not deviate from the ISO/IEC 29500:2008 or Ecma-376 standard and to parties that do not "file, maintain or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of such Covered Specification".
The Open Specification Promise was included in documents submitted to ISO/IEC in support of the ECMA-376 fast track submission.
Ecma International asserted that, "The OSP enables both open source and commercial software to implement [the specification]".
ECMA-376 1st edition (2006)
The ECMA standard is structured in five parts to meet the needs of different audiences.Part 1. Fundamentals:
- Vocabulary, notational conventions and abbreviations
- Summary of primary and supporting markup languages
- Conformance conditions and interoperability guidelines
- Constraints within the Open Packaging Conventions that apply to each document type
Part 2. Open Packaging Conventions:
- The Open Packaging Conventions (OPC), for the package model and physical package, is defined and used by various document types in various applications from multiple vendors.
- It defines core properties, thumbnails, digital signatures, and authorizations and encryption capabilities for parts or all the contents in the package.
- XML schemas for the OPC are declared as XML Schema Definitions (XSD) and (non-normatively) using RELAX NG (ISO/IEC 19757-2)
Part 3. Primer:
- Informative (non-normative) introduction to WordprocessingML, SpreadsheetML, PresentationML, DrawingML, VML and Shared MLs, providing context and illustrating elements through examples and diagrams
- Describes the custom XML data storing facility within a package to support integration with business data
Part 4. Markup Language Reference:
- Contains the reference material for WordprocessingML, SpreadsheetML, PresentationML, DrawingML, Shared MLs and Custom XML Schema, defining every element and attribute including the element hierarchy (parent/child relationships)
- XML schemas for the markup languages are declared as XSD and (non-normatively) using RELAX NG
- Defines the custom XML data storing facility
Part 5. Markup Compatibility and Extensibility:
- Describes extension facilities of OpenXML documents and specifies elements and attributes by which applications with different extensions can interoperate
ISO/IEC 29500:2008
The ISO/IEC standard is structured into four parts. Parts 1, 2 and 3 are independent standards; for example Part 2, specifying Open Packaging Conventions, is used by other files formats including XPSXPS
XPS may refer to:* X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy XPS, also known as ESCA* Exopolysaccharide, or extracellular polymeric substance, a sliming substance secreted by bacteria and responsible for cells adhesion onto surfaces and in biofilms...
and Design Web Format
Design Web Format
Design Web Format is a secure file format developed by Autodesk for the efficient distribution and communication of rich design data to anyone who needs to view, review, or print design files...
. Part 4 is to be read as a modification to Part 1, on which it depends.
A technically equivalent set of texts is also published by Ecma as ECMA-376 2nd edition (2008).
Part 1 (Fundamentals and Markup Language Reference):
- This part has 5560 pages. It contains:
- Conformance definitions
- Reference material for the XML document markup languages defined by the Standard
- XML schemas for the document markup languages declared using XSD and (non-normatively) RELAX NGRELAX NGIn computing, RELAX NG is a schema language for XML, based on Murata Makoto's RELAX and James Clark's TREX. A RELAX NG schema specifies a pattern for the structure and content of an XML document...
- Defines the foreign markup facilities
Part 2 (Open Packaging Conventions):
- This part has 129 pages. It contains:
- A description of the Open Packaging Conventions (package model, physical package)
- Core properties, thumbnailThumbnailThumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words...
s and digital signatureDigital signatureA digital signature or digital signature scheme is a mathematical scheme for demonstrating the authenticity of a digital message or document. A valid digital signature gives a recipient reason to believe that the message was created by a known sender, and that it was not altered in transit...
s - XML schemas for the OPC are declared using XSD and (non-normatively) RELAX NGRELAX NGIn computing, RELAX NG is a schema language for XML, based on Murata Makoto's RELAX and James Clark's TREX. A RELAX NG schema specifies a pattern for the structure and content of an XML document...
)
Part 3 (Markup Compatibility and Extensibility):
- This part has 40 pages. It contains:
- A description of extensions: elements and attributes which define mechanisms allowing applications to specify alternative means of negotiating content
- Extensibility rules are expressed using NVDLNamespace-based Validation Dispatching LanguageNamespace-based Validation Dispatching Language is an XML schema language for validating XML documents that integrate with multiple namespaces. It is an ISO/IEC standard, and it is Part 4 of the DSDL schema specification. Much of the work on NVDL is based on the older Namespace Routing Language.-...
Part 4 (Transitional Migration Features):
- This part has 1464 pages. It contains:
- Legacy material such as compatibility settings and the graphics markup language VML
- A list of syntactic differences between this text and ECMA-376 1st edition
The standard specifies two levels of document and application conformance, strict and transitional for each of WordprocessingML, PresentationML and SpreadsheetML. The standard also specifies applications descriptions of base and full.
Compatibility between versions
The intent of the changes from ECMA-376 1st edition to ISO/IEC 29500:2008 was that a valid ECMA-376 document would be a valid ISO 29500 "transitional" document, but at least one change introduced at the BRM (refusing to allow further values for xsd:boolean) had the effect of breaking backwards compatibility for most documents. A fix for this has been suggested to ISO/IEC JTC1ISO/IEC JTC1
ISO/IEC JTC 1 is Joint Technical Committee 1 of the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission . It deals with all matters of information technology....
/SC34/WG4, and was approved in June 2009 to go forward as a recommendation for the first amendment to Office Open XML.
Applications able to read documents compliant to ECMA-376 edition 1 will regard ISO/IEC 29500-4 Transitional documents containing ISO 8601 dates as corrupt.
File formats
The Office Open XML file formats are a set of file formatFile format
A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
s that can be used to represent electronic office
Office suite
In computing, an office suite, sometimes called an office software suite or productivity suite is a collection of programs intended to be used by knowledge workers...
documents. The format defines a set of XML markup vocabularies for word processing
Word processing
Word processing is the creation of documents using a word processor. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter.-External links:...
documents, spreadsheets and presentations as well as specific XML markup vocabularies for material such as mathematical formulae, graphics, bibliographies etc. The stated goal of the Office Open XML standard is to be capable of faithfully representing the pre-existing corpus of word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations that had been produced by the Microsoft Office applications and to facilitate extensibility and interoperability by enabling implementations by multiple vendors and on multiple platforms.
An Office Open XML file is a ZIP
ZIP (file format)
Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...
-compatible OPC package containing XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
documents and other resources. That is, one can see the contents of an OOXML file, for example by renaming it to a .zip file and opening it with any zip tool. The actual .xml files can then be viewed in a web browser or a plain text editor.
Adoption
Several countries have formally announced either adoption, or the evaluation of adoption of Office Open XML. In some cases the Office Open XML standard has a national standard identifier; In some cases the Office Open XML standard is permitted to be used where national regulation says that non-proprietary formats must be used, in other cases, it means that some government body has actually decided that Office Open XML will be used in some specific context.Australia: Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
's Department of Finance has released a desktop policy that required all agencies to adopt Office Open XML as the standard document format.
Belgium: Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
's Federal Public Service for Information and Communication Technology in 2006 was evaluating the adoption of the Office Open XML format. It already then confirmed that it would consider all ISO standards to be open standards, mentioning Office Open XML as such a possible future ISO standard.
Denmark: In June 2007, the Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation
Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Denmark
The Danish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Higher Education is the Danish ministry in charge of research, innovation and education above high school/upper secondary school....
recommended that beginning with January 1, 2008 public authorities must support at least one of the two word processing document formats Office Open XML or Open Document Format
OpenDocument
The Open Document Format for Office Applications is an XML-based file format for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents....
in all new IT solutions, where appropriate.
Germany: In Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
the Office Open XML standard is currently under observation by the Federal Commissioner for Information Technology ("Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Informationstechnik"). The latest release of "SAGA" (Standards and Architectures for E-Government-Applications) includes Office Open XML file formats in both its strict and transitional variant. The ISO/IEC 29500 standard may be used to exchange complex documents when further processing is required.
Japan: On June 29, 2007, the government of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
published a new interoperability framework which gives preference to the procurement of products that follow open standards. On July 2 the government declared that they hold the view that formats like Office Open XML which organizations such as Ecma International
Ecma International
Ecma International is an international, private non-profit standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired its name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association changed its name to reflect the organization's global reach and activities...
and ISO had also approved was, according to them, an open standard. Also, they said that it was one of the preferences, whether the format is open, to choose which software the government shall deploy.
Lithuania: Lithuanian Standards Board has adopted the ISO/IEC 29500:2008 Office Open XML format standard as Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n National standard. The decision was made by Technical Committee 4 Information Technology on March 5, 2009. The proposal to adopt the Office Open XML format standard was submitted by Lithuanian Archives Department under the Government of the Republic of Lithuania
Government of the Republic of Lithuania
Government of the Republic of Lithuania is the cabinet of Lithuania. It consists of the Prime Minister, who is Head of Government, and 14 government ministers....
.
Norway: Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
's Ministry of Government Administration and Reform
Norwegian Ministry of Government Administration and Reform
The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Government Administration and Reform is a Norwegian ministry established in 2006. The ministry is responsible for reform work, information technology, competition policy in addition to having the main responsibility for government employees and government organisation...
is evaluating the adoption of the Office Open XML format. The ministry put the document standard under observation in December 2007.
Sweden: The Kingdom of Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
has adopted Office Open XML as a 4 part Swedish National Standard SS-ISO/IEC 29500:2009.
Switzerland: In July 2007, the Swiss Federal Council
Swiss Federal Council
The Federal Council is the seven-member executive council which constitutes the federal government of Switzerland and serves as the Swiss collective head of state....
announced adherence SAGA.ch e-Government standards mandatory for its departments as well as for cantons, cities and municipalities. The latest version of SAGA.ch includes Office Open XML file formats.
United Kingdom: The UK has put out an action plan for use of open standard
Open standard
An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed . There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage....
s, which includes ISO/IEC 29500 as one of several formats to be supported.
United States of America: On April 15, 2009, the ANSI
Ansi
Ansi is a village in Kaarma Parish, Saare County, on the island of Saaremaa, Estonia....
-accredited INCITS
INCITS
The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards, or INCITS , is an ANSI-accredited forum of IT developers. It was formerly known as the X3 and NCITS....
organisation voted to adopt ISO/IEC 29500:2008 as an American National Standard.
- The stateU.S. stateA U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
of MassachusettsMassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
has been examining its options for implementing XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
-based document processing. In early 2005, Eric KrissEric KrissEric Arthur Kriss is a musician and business executive who served as Secretary of Administration and Finance in Massachusetts Governor Romney's cabinet , and as assistant A&F secretary under Governor William Weld...
, Secretary of Administration and Finance in Massachusetts, was the first governmentGovernmentGovernment refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
official in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to publicly connect open formats to a public policy purpose: "It is an overriding imperative of the American democratic system that we cannot have our public documents locked up in some kind of proprietary format, perhaps unreadable in the future, or subject to a proprietary system license that restricts access". Since 2007 Massachusetts has classified Office Open XML as "Open Format" and has amended its approved technical standards list — the Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM) — to include Office Open XML. Massachusetts, under heavy pressure from some vendors, now formally endorses Office Open XML formats for its public records.
Application support
Some older versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office are able to read and write docx files after installation of the free compatibility pack provided by Microsoft, but some items such as equations are converted into images that cannot be edited.Starting with Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007 is a Windows version of the Microsoft Office System, Microsoft's productivity suite. Formerly known as Office 12 in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006 and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007...
, the Office Open XML file formats have become the default file format of Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
. However, due to the changes introduced in the Office Open XML standard, Office 2007 is not entirely in compliance with ISO/IEC 29500:2008.
Microsoft Office 2010 includes support for the ISO/IEC 29500:2008 compliant version of Office Open XML, but it can only save documents conforming to the transitional schemas of the specification, not the strict schemas. Note that the intent of the ISO/IEC is to allow the removal of the transitional variant from the ISO/IEC 29500 standard.
The ability to read and write Office Open XML format is however not limited to Microsoft Office; other office products are also able to read and write this format. SoftMaker Office 2010
SoftMaker Office
SoftMaker Office is an office suite for Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows CE, and the Pocket PC, developed since 1989 by the German company SoftMaker Software GmbH, Nuremberg....
is able to read and write .DOCX and .XLSX files in its word processor and spreadsheet applications. OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...
from version 3.0 has been able to import Office Open XML files. Version 3.2 improves this feature with read/write support even for password-protected Office Open XML files. KOffice
KOffice
Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE created from KOffice in 2010. It is available for desktop PCs, tablet computers, and smartphones...
version 2.2 and later is able to import Office Open XML files. Other office products that offer import support for the Office Open XML formats include TextEdit
TextEdit
TextEdit is a simple, open source word processor and text editor, first featured in NeXT's NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is now distributed with Mac OS X since Apple Inc.'s acquisition of NeXT, and available as a GNUstep application for other Unix-compatible operating systems such as Linux...
(included with Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
), iWork
IWork
iWork is an office suite of desktop applications created by Apple for the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. The first version of iWork, iWork '05, was released in 2005. The suite originally bundled Keynote, a presentation program which had previously been sold as a standalone application, and...
, IBM Lotus Notes, WordPerfect
WordPerfect
WordPerfect is a word processing application, now owned by Corel.Bruce Bastian, a Brigham Young University graduate student, and BYU computer science professor Dr. Alan Ashton joined forces to design a word processing system for the city of Orem's Data General Corp. minicomputer system in 1979...
, Kingsoft Office and Google Docs.
See also
- List of document markup languages
- Comparison of document markup languagesComparison of document markup languagesThe following tables compare general and technical information for a number of document markup languages. Please see the individual markup languages' articles for further information.-General information:...
- Open Document Format
External links
- Download the ISO/IEC 29500 standards from ISO's Freely available standards page.
- OpenXMLDeveloper.org
- OpenXML.biz