Hands-On Report--docXConverter 1.0, a Microsoft Word 2007 .docx File Converter
The Mac developer community has beaten the pants off Microsoft's Mac BU in already providing a converter for the new default XML format of Microsoft Word 2007. As we noted in several articles, the Mac BU has promised to provide file converters for Office:Mac 2004 and v.X in the spring of 2007, several months behind the official release of Office 2007 even though file converters for the previous Windows version of Office are already available. The Mac BU even explained in detail why it will take several months after the official release of Office 2007 to produce the Mac converters. It didn't take Panergy that long.
Yesterday, Panergy released docXConverter 1.0 for converting Word 2007 .docx files to .rtf (rich text file) files that the Mac version of Word 2004 and Word v.X can read. docXConverter 1.0 is $20 shareware. Panergy has addressed a huge problem for some since the default format of the new Office 2007 is the new XML-based .docx and Office 2007 is already in use in the enterprise and through free trial downloads from Microsoft's Web site. The .docx files are not compatible with any Mac version of Microsoft Office.
Does it work? We downloaded docXConverter 1.0 which has a trial mode. The trial allows one to convert up to 20 documents for free. Three sample .docx documents of varying complexity are included. All three were converted to an .rtf file and opened in Word 2004 by docXConverter 1.0 with no apparent problem. We even saved the .rtf as .doc files with no problem except for a font substitution required since our copy of Word 2004 does not have the Calibri font.
docXConverter 1.0 failed to convert the sample.docx file available from OpenXMLDeveloper.com and provided an error message that it only works on .docx and .doc files. Same with the Office 12 file from OSNews. However, these two files are NOT in the final Word 2007 format. Even our trial copy of Microsoft Word 2007 couldn't open them. docXConverter 1.0 converted the ten .docx files in EuroLook-DOCX-Sample-Documents available from SourceForge.net.
Unfortunately, as of review publication time we do not have a copy of Word 2007 to compare the original .docx sample files and converted .rtf files side by side or to generate independently a .docx file. We tried to download a trial copy of Office 2007 from Microsoft using Parallels running Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 but were thwarted by the registration page claiming that we hadn't filled in all the required fields when in fact we had--we even filled in all of the optional fields but no joy. We ran into the same exact problem trying to register for the download using Safari and Camino under Mac OS X 10.4.8. We finally gave up when ironically the online version of Office 2007 trial failed to run stating that the Citrix server didn't work yet with Windows Vista. Later we were able to download a trial copy of Office 2007 when we set up Parallels with Windows XP.
In summary, docXConverter 1.0 works well. Those who need to convert Word 2007 .docx files to run on Word 2004 and v.X should check out Panergy's offering. There's also Docx-Converter.com but it loses images and formatting and a docx Automator Script that requires one to unzip a .docx file.
Panergy has beaten Microsoft's Mac BU by over three months. But to be fair, docXConverter only converts Word 2007 files and not Excel 2007 or PowerPoint 2007 files. The Mac BU will produce all three converters and they will be free. [Updated: we added comments on the two errant .docx files and edited this review accordingly.] [Bill Fox]
Saw something? Send a tip
The archive ran on reader tips. What did you see, where, and do you want the credit?