Transfering text based documents can be a difficult task to say the least,  especially with the addition of rival companies favoring their own type of formating, instead of one truly universal format.

Microsoft has been working towards helping users achieve the task of transfering text documents between various office programs. Specifically, Microsoft seems to focus on the ODF format established by Open Office application that is becoming a rival to it’s own standard. 

Infact, they have released a translation program that converts Word documents into more open formats to ease the diffulty and fustration involved in this process.

Users can already save word documents in several different formats, but this process does not seem to preserve all of the layout and styling. This new program is supposed to allow Word users to save, open, and edit text documents that have been previously saved in the ODF format, which is favored by the ever popular Open Office application.

Microsoft Word users can already download the translation program at the sourceforge site but official release at the microsoft download section will follow in the coming days. Add-ons for PowerPoint and Excel will also be ready by the end of 2007.

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