The first trial version of the revamped Microsoft productivity suite will be available as early as next November, Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president at Microsoft, said in an interview with C | Net.
The official did not elaborate on the details of the new features of version 12 of Office, which will be available commercially in the middle of next year simultaneously with Windows Vista, but guaranteed that until the first beta version becomes available, the company expects to reveal more news.
The official also confirmed the information published this week by the press – citing information published by a Microsoft technician in a blog – that the new version of the operating system, through Office, will allow the recording of documents in PDF format.
According to Steven Sinofsky, the Microsoft website receives about 120 thousand requests from users each month so that the company’s operating system can now support the PDF format, so this is an answer to those requests.
According to the information disclosed in a blog PDF support will be developed for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Visio and InfoPath.
With regard to this matter, the official also stressed that since 2000 Microsoft has been making an effort to open Office, first with support for HTML files and later also for XML files.
Along with PDF support, Microsoft is also working on a new text format, which will be called Metro, and which adopts many of the features of PDF.
This new text format should be available at the same time as the new version of the operating system, but on this subject the vice president of Microsoft declined to comment.
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