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Novell has announced that they are adding support for the recently launched MS Office 2007 document format to their version of the OpenOffice productivity suite for the Linux operating system.

Novell has provided a modified version of OpenOffice.org 2.02 as a free download for their registered users, which is compatible with Office 2007 documents.

This version supports the Open XML document format and would enable the users to e-mail any document as a Microsoft Office file from the system’s default e-mail application. Users can also migrate Excel VBA macros to OpenOffice’s Calc.

Novell is also working with Microsoft to create bidirectional open-source translators for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations to work between the two office productive suites. Justin Steinman, Novell’s director of marketing spoke on this development: “What this means is another step in improving interoperability between Office and OpenOffice as organizations start opening to mixed environments.”