DOC vs DOCX

There should be a special place in Hell reserved for Microsoft developers. Anybody who has received a DOCX file from someone using a newer version of Mirosoft Word will probably agree with me.

My daughter just came home from school with an electronic version of a document she needs to edit. She tried to edit it using the family computer and was surprised when she got an error relating to not being able to read the file. She erroneously thought that because the file was created on an old computer at school, she needed to find an older version of Microsoft Word to read it. So I emerged from my office listening to my daughter yell about how her teacher is an idiot for giving her an old file that none of our newer computers could read.

I asked my daughter to explain the problem because I knew I could help her. I have every copy of Word since it was originally called "Word For Windows 1.1." She handed over her thumb drive and started talking crazy. I couldn't really understand what she was saying other than she hates her teacher and thinks that anyone who would assign such homework should die spitting blood. I made sure to keep my distance as I tried to help.

I plugged the drive into my trusty MacBook and immediately saw the problem. The Mac Mini that my kids use at home has an old version of Microsoft Office that doesn't read DOCX files. Instead it only understands DOC files. I have a newer version of Office on my computer and could easily read the file. I then saved it to her thumb drive in the DOC format.

My daughter thought she needed an older version of software when she really needed the newer version. This leads one to ask, "Why would Microsoft take one of the most ubiquitous file formats in the world and change it?" The answer is actually quite simple. The DOC file format has been around since the late 80's and has had so many things added to it that nobody really understands how to decode it anymore. In fact, Microsoft embeds an older version of Word in their new version simply to read old DOC formats. Once old documents are read into memory, they are internally converted to the new format. If you try to save the edits in the old DOC format, it tries to save it using the old version of Word. If you just happen to use a new feature not available in the older version, it throws away part of your document.

How do I know that? I actually prefer to use OpenOffice.org which looks an aweful lot like Microsoft Office. When someone from Microsoft was asked to comment on a new version of OpenOffice.org and how it can read DOC files, the Microsoft employee explained how they couldn't reliably read old DOC files so how could anybody else. He then went on to explain what I just explained above.

Doesn't that instill a sense of confidence in Microsoft products? Maybe that is why I prefer Linux. Now I just need to secretly install the newer version of Microsoft Office on the kids' computer to avoid any future outbursts.