[flatfour]

We have just begun to deploy Office 2007 to a small group of pilot users within IT. We have just discovered that any Word or Excel 2007 attachments can't be opened on the handhelds. I have just opened a case with T-Support but hope to get an answer here a bit quicker.

I will post the results I get from support whenever they may come.

BES 4.1.2 for Exchange
Exchange 2003
Dedicated attachment server

Thanks

Jim in Chicagoland

[flatfour]

Hello Jim,

Thank you for contacting BlackBerry Technical Support.

At this time we do not support the attachment viewing of documents composed in Microsoft Office 2007.

If you require further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us. Thank you again for contacting us.

Sincerely,

BlackBerry Technical Support
Research In Motion Limited
Tel: 1-877-255-2377

[jibi]

Just save the documents in the legacy format rather than the new docx or xlsx extensions. You can do this by going to File (ALT+F or the Office logo at the top left) then Save As then Word 97-2003 Document (or Excel 97-2003 Worksheet). This should be fairly common practice for the next year or two, especially if you send documents to persons/customers outside of your own company. Unfortunately, not everyone will adopt Office 2007 and it's new formats within the first week or two of its availability.

[eviljonny]

Saving the document as a Word 2003 document WILL NOT WORK. Blackberry as of yet does not support Office 2007 documents in any capacity. This is a HUGE problem that RIM should have seen coming a mile away. Why they do not have an update for the attachment service to resolve this issue is baffling! I wonder how many companies have switched to Office 2007 only to find that they can no longer manage attachments from their Blackberries? LOL! Way to go RIM. And while I am at it M$ too! :(

[Nanookz]

It has been a month since the last posting. Has anyone heard anything new on this front?

We are experiencing the same problem but I am the only one in the office using 2007. Someone brought it to my attention when they couldn't open a doc that I sent to them in the 97-2003 format.

We will have to put off upgrading to 2007 until this issue is resolved.

[ladydi]

Originally Posted by Nanookz

It has been a month since the last posting. Has anyone heard anything new on this front?

We are experiencing the same problem but I am the only one in the office using 2007. Someone brought it to my attention when they couldn't open a doc that I sent to them in the 97-2003 format.

We will have to put off upgrading to 2007 until this issue is resolved.

That's just it, M$ should have done more to work with RIM on this because people need their BB's and they will just not go to the new office products if it hampers functionality of something higher on the priority scale. Hopefully RIM will have a solution soon.

[mebiuspower]

Originally Posted by eviljonny

Saving the document as a Word 2003 document WILL NOT WORK. Blackberry as of yet does not support Office 2007 documents in any capacity. This is a HUGE problem that RIM should have seen coming a mile away. Why they do not have an update for the attachment service to resolve this issue is baffling! I wonder how many companies have switched to Office 2007 only to find that they can no longer manage attachments from their Blackberries? LOL! Way to go RIM. And while I am at it M$ too! :(

Well frankly it's your IT's friggin responsibility to do testing for all your programs and devices for compatibility before the actual deployment. It's very intelligent move to migrate to 2007 now as 99%+ companies out there don't even know what Office 2007 is nor they realize there's a new file format.

Isn't it obvious that M$ and RIM are not friends? Is your office under a big rock?

[ladydi]

perhaps just a small rock with a big shadow. ;) I didn't know that it wouldn't work either, but I would never trust that it would and find out the hard way!

[Nanookz]

We are in DC and there are blackberries everywhere. I haven't seen any news on this anywhere except here. There are going to be alot of unhappy people very soon.

[JabbaTH]

There does seem to be an issue. We are running BES v4.0.6. Documents saved in 2003 format with Word 2007 will not open - Unrecognized document format.

This occurs even if the document was originally created in Word 2003.

[noname]

I did some testing myself not long before. Excel 2007 & Powerpoint 2007 documents saved in their native 2003 file format worked on my BlackBerry, but not Word 2007. I have found the workaround, i.e. to open up the already saved native Word 2003 in "Word 2003" app itself and re-save it again. I think the newer 2007 documents will definitely not work as the Attachment Service is built around the Office 2003 version or below datastore structures. It certainly will not be able to recongnize the newer 2007 structure.

[bertiebassett]

Guys

I think everyone needs to get a sense of reality here....

If you've made the jump to office 2007 then good on you..however many companies are used to sharing data with suppliers/customers in the office standard formats of .doc and .xls. For at least a couple of year '03 Office has been the de'facto standard (odf etc notwithstanding), and therefore it was esay to assume your recipient could read your docs.

If you are using Office 2007 you need to advise people that send spreadsheets/ docs to third parties that they need to send as '03 format rather than '07 format, for whilst there are '07 viewers available, this is not much use if document editing is needed.

Native support for '07 standard office document attachment handling is slated for the next SP on BES, as to when this will be released, no doubt we will find much more info out in Florida in just over a months time...

Eviljonny - you're incredibly niave if you don't think that MSFT saw this as an opportunity to 'get one over RIM' even if that was not the main reason for the upgrade.

Personally I'm not pushing our company to '07 for at least another year as I can't afford 2 weeks of non-productivity whilst people go "where's the pivot table function gone'

bb

[merlin]

Evening all

Not this this will help anyone opening Office 2007 documents on their BBs, but there is a compatibility pack for Office 2000/XP/2003 on desktops...

Download details: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

We have deployed this to all our 3000+ PC's to ease the problems of compatibility while we are piloting and planning a mass rollout of Office 2007

Merlin

[noname]

Originally Posted by merlin

Evening all

Not this this will help anyone opening Office 2007 documents on their BBs, but there is a compatibility pack for Office 2000/XP/2003 on desktops...

Download details: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

We have deployed this to all our 3000+ PC's to ease the problems of compatibility while we are piloting and planning a mass rollout of Office 2007

Merlin

This pack is for existing Office 2003 apps alreadyinstalled on PC. Will not help BlackBerry attachment browsing. The main point here is that the main engine of theBlackBerry Attachment Service need to be updated in order to service the attachment rendering for the handheld.

[Nanookz]

I was upgrading my server to bes 4.1 and ran into some problems. I talked to 2 different tech support and during some of the small talk I mentioned this issue. Both claim to have never heard of this issue. One did say that he hoped that any problems would be fixed in the next Bes update.

[bertiebassett]

Guys

Native support for office '07 docs is definately in SP4. Not sure of the release date yet though..

[showtime]

SP4 should be released by the end of this month or beginning of next month. That's what RIM told at WES.

[davecampbell]

It is May 24. Are you saying I should expect an update of the BES Attachment service in the next week? So called "SP4"?

I can't believe there is an issue opening attachments - makes me want to move everyone to Windows Mobile immediately, and leave RIM far behind.

[ladydi]

That was not a very educated response.

I can't believe you are using the xml format. I save everything in 97-2003 format because most people can't see my docs if I don't - BB or not. AND, I'm betting you can't open xml docs on any pre win mobile 6 devices anyway. how many people do you know who have a windows mobile 6 device yet?

[davecampbell]

Sure, whatever. Now when is RIM going to support Office 2007 attachments?