Some people have to use MS Office, whether because of outdated corporate policy or some other reason. But now, Sun’s ODF plugin for MSO will allow them to use OpenDocument Format from within MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Malte Timmermann discusses the new plugin on his blog.

It’s not the first plugin to do the job, but it is the most thorough and most user-friendly option. For example, it works with Word, Excel and PowerPoint for MS Office 2003, 2000 and XP. None of the others are so broad in their support.

It’s also more deeply integrated, making it much easier and more natural to work with ODF files from within MS Office. Timmermann writes, “It’s just another filter, and when you open some ODF file, you really work with the ODF file, which means you can save your modifications by pressing Ctrl+S. You can even configure Word to make ODF your default file format!”

Downloading the plugin requires registration at Sun’s website, but that is the only negative I have yet found with this tool.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 9:59 am and is filed under ODF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.