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Office 2007, released last week to business users, uses Microsoft's new Open XML to save documents by default. However the resulting Word .docx, Excel .xlsx and Powerpoint .pptx are completely incompatible with the latest version of Office for the Mac and will remain so until the Mac BU releases the plugin that it first announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers' Conference in August.

Sheridan Jones, group marketing manager, explained

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in the Mac BU's Mac Mojo blog that final work on the converter could not begin until the new file format had been locked down with the release of Office 2007.

As a result a beta version will be available next spring, with the finished converter released six to eight weeks after the release of the next version of Office for the Mac, which will natively support the new formats. With Microsoft having said that the Mac version will follow six to eight months' behind the Windows release, it could be next Autumn before Mac users can reliably work with Open XML files.

In the interim, Jones advises Mac Office users to advise their friends and colleagues using Office 2007 to save their documents as a 'Word/Excel/PowerPoint 97-2003 Document'.