Office 2007 add-ins for PDF and XPS

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Office 2007 hasn’t been released yet but already Microsoft are posting add-ins for it.

Office 2007 hasn’t been released yet but already Microsoft are posting add-ins for it. That might seem strange but it makes some sense in the complex world of inter-company rivalry.

The current Office 2007 beta release has ‘Save As’ options to let you create PDF and XPS documents directly from the programs. That will change because Adobe and Microsoft could not agree on terms for bundling the PDF export tool into Office 2007.

The final version of Office 2007 (and the upcoming Technical Refresh / Beta 3) will not have PDF or XPS exporting functions ‘out of the box’ but downloads from Microsoft will restore those functions.

The downloads are available here there are separate downloads for saving as PDF or XPS plus a combined download with both filters.

Having them as separate downloads instead of the base product makes some difference in the battle between the two companies – for their mutual customers it’s just an unnecessary nuisance – thanks guys.

PDF is the common Adobe Acrobat format. http://adobe.com/

XPS is Microsoft’s ‘XML Paper’ format which the company keeps saying isn’t a rival to PDF, but no-one believes that, least of all Microsoft. Details here.