Changes That Affect Multiple Products (Part 1)

File Formats

• OpenDocument Format (ODF) support
  SP2 lets you open, edit, and save documents in version 1.1 of the ODF for Word, for Excel, and for PowerPoint. Users of these Office programs can now open, edit, and save files in the OpenDocument Text (*.odt), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods), and OpenDocument Presentations (*.odp) formats.
   
• Extensible file formats
  Extensible File Formats: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint now include a converter interface that lets you plug third-party custom file formats into these Office programs. A developer can create a converter for files of a particular extension. When this converter is installed on a user’s computer, the custom file format effectively behaves like a built-in file format. Specifically, users can open files of this format and save them by using the Open or Save UI. They can even set the custom format as their default file format.
   
• Built-in Save As PDF/XPS support
  PDF/XPS support is built into SP2 for Word, for Excel, and for PowerPoint. Users no longer have to download the add-in separately.

Office Graphics

• Improves application performance when many graphic objects are present, especially for Excel 2007.
• Fixes several issues that involve the object model. These fixes let you better achieve parity with Office 2003 when the object model works with graphical objects.
• Increases printing fidelity of graphical objects in many scenarios.
• A new XML-based representation of each SmartArt graphic in a document is saved with the file to optimize interoperability. This new feature uses the standard DrawingML markup to describe the visual properties of the SmartArt graphic.
• Improves the Edit Points feature. This enables more accurate shape editing and increased interoperability with Office 2003.

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