Office 2007 introduced a new xml file format for their documents, docx, which seems to have caused some confusion amongst some of our clients. The Docx file format is specific to Office 2007 and doesn't work with other office applications or previous versions of Word. There are a number of ways that docx files can be converted to formats that others understand.

Things have to progress but I do wish Microsoft would pay at least a little more consideration to its users and a little less to steamrolling its strategies onto them. Judging from the general confusion from non-IT users it doesn't seem as if they go out of their way to tell people what's going on. I have to confess that I don't use office 2007 but I'm assuming that office 2007 saves to docx by default presumably to get their xml format out there so it becomes the defacto standard instead of the OpenDocument file format.

I'm an Office user myself on both Windows and Mac and like the product but I am getting a little tired of me and my clients being caught in the cross-fire between Microsoft and the rest of the world.