The company said on Wednesday that Office 2007 will include menu options for XML, ODF, and Adobe's PDF formats.

According to a company release, the project, "…will create tools to build a technical bridge between the Microsoft® Office Open XML Formats and the OpenDocument Format (ODF). This work is in response to government requests for interoperability with ODF because they work with constituent groups that use that format. In addition to being made available as free, downloadable add-ins for several older versions of the Microsoft Office system, the translation tools will be developed and licensed as open source software. The translation tools will be broadly available to the industry for use with other individual or commercial projects to accelerate document interoperability and expand customer choice between Open XML and other technologies."

The issue of standardized document formats for word processing or spreadsheets had acquired urgency in the face of compliance and security regulations. Earlier this year, IBM/Lotus had said that their forthcoming Notes client, code named Hannover and due to ship early next year, would include a text editor, a spreadsheet editor and a presentation graphics editor that support the XML-based ODF standard.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) approved the ODF standard earlier this year. Microsoft has so far pursued its own "open" file format called Office OpenXML, which is the default format in Office 2007. The new Office suite is slated to ship early next year.

The company now says that it will develop translators for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The first translator prototype, which will work with Word 2007, will be posted next week on SourceForge.net and be available under the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license.

Even as the debate over standardized file formats has been raging for some time now, end-users say the real issues involve the costs of re-formatting archived documents, support and training, and the possibility that multiple formats could make it difficult to share documents with customers and partners.