Hi, everyone! Thanks to everyone who took the time to attend today's webcast. For those who didn't but wanted to, the recording should be available on-demand by tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I promised lots of follow-up links for more information, so here goes (answers to earlier questions that I promised to post here follow the links).
For those who want a review of much of what we looked at today, see Office MVP Beth Melton's excellent article Microsoft Office Open XML Formats for the Non-developer.
If you're looking for more understanding, background, history on what XML is in general (as opposed to Office-specific XML), there is a really nice article in Wikipedia that gives some good, clear definitions: Wikipedia on XML.
For more information on the beta version of the compatibility pack that lets you access and use the new file format documents in Office XP or 2003 (or to download it), see Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats (Beta 2) (note that the article at this link also provides a nice listing of each of the new file format file extensions available).
As mentioned, Beta 2 is freely available. If you don't yet have it but would like it - go to the beta site to either try an online test drive (that doesn't require downloading) or to either download or order a CD of the full beta 2 product: Get the beta or take the test drive
For those who haven't seen the beta yet, or would like to see more - the Microsoft Office preview site has lots of information and access to additional resources about all of the 2007 Office release beta products.
You can also go straight to the Office Beta Community site, with lots of articles, blog links, and information about upcoming events (such as live chats) to help you get acquainted with the new version of Office.
If you were intrigued by Windows Vista today (or if you want to check out why you might be intrigued ... it's really very nifty ;-) ... you can get the Vista beta here.
You can also get more information about Windows Vista from the following links:
Windows Vista home page
Vista Community
My previous Vista webcasts, avaialble on-demand:
Vista Search and Organization Tools
Using Vista to help get your work done more easily
For those who want to dive deeper into the Office XML file formats, a really good place to start is with the source. Check out these two blogs from Office product team members:
Brian Jones' blog on the Open XML Formats
Kevin Boske's Office Development blog (Kevin's blog is where programmers will find the article I mentioned in the session today about how to programmatically delete a document part).
For those who want to go further still, go to the Microsoft Office Developer Center home page for XML in Office
For developer types who want to learn more about the XML file formats in content written for programmers, check out the MSDN introduction to the new file formats: Introducing the Microsoft Office (2007) Open XML File Formats
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, that's a lot of links! If I promised you one that I neglected to include, please let me know but I think that should about cover it.
Meanwhile -- a few more pieces of info ...
- I am still working on an answer regarding the xlsb file format and it's raison d'etre. Thanks for your patience -- I won't forget to follow-up on this.
- As far as using the beta for production work and saving your mission-critical work documents in the new file formats right now ... the word is just DON'T. Please keep in mind that this is beta software, still under development. If you don't have an additional machine where you can run the beta without having to depend upon it for your urgent work, try the test drive mentioned above instead of installing the beta.
- Someone posted a question on my previous blog post asking about running multiple versions of Office side-by-side, with one of them being the beta. You'll hear some people tell you that it's okay to run multiple versions of Office side-by-side on the same hard drive, but I am not one of those people. I've never seen it done without some type of complication -- and I would never do it myself. HOWEVER -- I don't think ANYONE will tell you that it's a good idea to run another version side-by-side with BETA software. You are just asking for trouble - potentially big trouble, particularly if this is on the machine you depend upon for your daily work.
For the person who asked the question -- since you uninstalled Office 2003 AFTER installing the 2007 beta, here's what I would suggest: UNINSTALL the beta, make sure 2003 is ALSO uninstalled, THEN reinstall the beta if that is the version you want to run. Uninstalling 2003 after the beta was installed might leave some conflicts behind. That doesn't come from Microsoft - that comes from my own experience running multiple versions.
For everyone -- if you are going to run the 2007 beta in a production environment (which Microsoft clearly does NOT recommend), PLEASE back up your important files before using them in Office. AND, if you are going to install the VISTA beta - keep in mind that Vista will make your earlier Windows version inaccessible, including most of your user files -- so back up ALL of your files before installing the Vista beta.
Tip: If you're going to be jumping into the beta pond -- you might want to do what I did a couple of weeks ago, before I started using the Vista and Office betas on my production machines (and trust me - I back up my work ALL THE TIME because of this decision) ... I bought an external USB hard drive. It's 100 GB and cost just over $100. It's hot-swappable, so now I keep all of my mission critical work files on the external hard drive, so that I can access them from any of my computers -- and dont' have to worry if a beta machine goes wonky :) (I'm FAR from a hardware expert -- so I won't make a particular brand or model recommendation.)
... Last but not least -- keep an eye on my book link in the navigation pane on this site for updates about my upcoming Office 2007 book, which will be an advanced document production book -- including a good amount of VBA and XML for the non-programmer. Nothing at that link just yet, but I will start posting information (and possibly even get permission to share some chapters in progress) as the book moves along in the next few months.
Okay -- well ... back to work for me. Hope everyone found today's session useful -- and hope to see you next week (Tuesday, June 20th) for an Office 2003 webcast on Excel charts -- and next month, for a look at some of my favorite new features in the 2007 Office release (Tuesday, July 18th).
Happy Thursday everyone!
