REDMOND, Wash. — May 21, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. is offering customers greater choice and more flexibility among document formats, as well as creating additional opportunities for developer and competitors, by expanding the range of document formats supported in its flagship Office productivity suite.

If you think that you always get what you pay for, the just-released beta of OpenOffice 3.0 should convince you otherwise. This free, open-source software suite provides most of what anyone could want in an office suite, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, database, drawing tools and math equation editor. Although it doesn't include all of the high-end features and the slick user interface of Microsoft Office 2007 (for the PC) and Microsoft Office 2008 (for the Mac), it will handle just about any job you need done.

A beta version of OpenOffice.org 3.0 has been released for evaluation by the public. This version of the popular software suite will support the forthcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard as well as being able to open files created with Microsoft Office 2007 or Office 2008 for Mac, including .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx alongside the traditional Office binary file formats such as .doc, .xls, and .ppt. It is also the first version of OpenOffice that will run on Mac OS X without X11.

The news media seems to have difficulty identifying ODF supporters so I prepared a one page field guide for their benefit. Please pass this along to any news organizations or their representatives.

You can automate the document creation and manipulation process. You can use jOpenDocument to: