ActiveWin.com: TechED 2005 - Detailed Office 12 File Structure Information

Well, some information is starting to come out about the next office system.  We announced the other day that Steve Ballmer stated that they were moving away from the traditional binary structures of Office Files.  Office 2003 provided us with the ability to save files in XML format and actually edit them from within the office application that created the file while retaining an “xml” file extension.  (Office XP had limited capabilities on this front.)  There is a problem with this.  The way that they had done it before was a great first try. (It wasn’t even possible before.)  In Office 12, file extensions are changing yet again.  They are going to start to add an “x” to the end of each file.  So now, instead of “.doc” it will be “.docx”.  “So what,” you say?  Who cares?  Let me elaborate…

Office 12 will separate each file and contain it within its own file.  The new “docx” for Word and “xlsx” zip files with a different extension.  Within that file will be the actual jpg, bmp, gif, mov, etc… files compressed in one zipped file.  Also, data will be kept in another file, separate from the formatting, which will be in another file, and even macros, which will be contained within its own macro file.  Do you notice a pattern here?  Imagine the capabilities of parsing that information.  The speed of reading and finding information from these files WILL be shortened greatly.  Accessing and leveraging that information from other interfaces will be greatly enhanced as well.  If you want to modify a portion of the document without opening the entire thing, you can open the zipped file and edit the actual portion of the file that you want.  (Format, Macro’s, etc…)  Portions of other documents, such as charts, images, etc… will be accessible via url’s just like any standard linking today.  If you want to modify an image from within a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, simply modify the jpg or gif file contained within the Office 12 document and the changes will be reflected immediately.  You may have already concluded from the second sentence that these files will also be significantly smaller.  The individual that we spoke to from Microsoft informed us that they are seeing decreases of file size to 15% of their original size by using this new structure internally.

For users of previous Office versions, there will be a patch that they are supposed to be creating right now that will see the new extension and determine how to parse it and convert the file correctly.  Does that mean that you will be able to edit and save a new Office 12 file in Office 2003 and retain the structure?  I am not sure, but I imagine that would defeat the reason for an end user to upgrade.

On a final note, the only products that will support this format will be: Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

For more information, please see the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/wave12