> m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: >> Yep, as well as .xlsx >> >> But, I mean, you know all the *pressing* and Important reasons that M$ >> had >> to change the file format.... >> > > FWIW, the new formats are XML based, albeit compressed. in most > theories, this is a good idea for portability. > > the old file formats were proprietary, complex and full of ugliness from > 20 years of extensions and variations (.DOC was used by MS Word for > MSDOS circa 1985). Yes, I know, MS did their own XML 'open' document <snip> Yeah, some of us have been around that long and remember. Fortunately, I wasn't forced to pollute my mind with Word until the late nineties, at worst. Until then, when M$ paid with what we now know were illegal kickbacks to the manufacturers, *everyone* used WordPerfect, which, starting with 5.0, was *very* good. Too bad they have never been able to market their way out of a wet paper bag with the Governator. Also dumb, since their reveal codes showed codes that would have had a one-to-one translation to html. mark