Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: ODF Spreadsheet Bickering: What It Means to an Enterprise

The saga continues – read the full post for more details

Given that Microsoft's recent release of Office 2007 SP2 includes native support for the ODF file format, it was only a matter of time before Rob Weir (IBM) would find something he didn't like about it. On Sunday, May 3, he wrote a blog post entitled, "Update on ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability," saying that Microsoft had coded to the wrong behavior. He notes, "But I cannot fail to notice that the same application -- Microsoft Excel 2007 -- will process ODF spreadsheet documents without problems when loaded via the Sun or CleverAge plugins, but will miserably fail when using the "improved" integrated code in Office 2007 SP2. This ain't right."

Doug Mahugh (Microsoft) issued a returning salvo on Tuesday, May 5, in the form of a blog post entitled, "ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability." When Doug walked through Rob's documented steps, he found that Office 2007 did a better job of rendering the OpenOffice.org-created spreadsheet than Lotus Symphony (e.g., Days to Go equals "102" [Excel] rather than "of:B4-B3" [Symphony])."

Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: ODF Spreadsheet Bickering: What It Means to an Enterprise