Microsoft Office File formats

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Office versions, applications and file formats

• pre 95 DOS versions
• pre 95 Windows versions
  • Microsoft Word 6.0
• Microsoft Office 95
• Microsoft Office 97 - 2003
  • Uses the OLE Compound File format for most of the file formats
    • Microsoft Word uses the Word Document (DOC) file format
    • Microsoft Excel uses the Excel Spreadsheet (XLS) file format
    • Microsoft PowerPoint uses the PowerPoint Presentation (PPT) file format
    • Microsoft Publisher
    • Microsoft Visio
  • Microsoft Outlook uses multiple file formats for different purposes
    • the Personal Folder File (PAB, PST, OST) format to store e-mails, appointments, tasks, notes, contacts, etc. The PFF format changed from a 32-bit to a 64-bit version in Outlook 2003.
    • the Nickfile (NK2) format to store e-mail address aliases
  • Microsoft Access uses a file format based on Microsoft Joint Engine Technology (JET)
• Microsoft Office 2007
  • Uses the ZIP archive file format for most of the file formats
    • Microsoft Word uses the Word Document (DOCX) file format
    • Microsoft Excel uses the Excel Spreadsheet (XLSB) and Excel Spreadsheet (XLSX) file formats
    • Microsoft PowerPoint
    • Microsoft Publisher
    • Microsoft Visio
  • Microsoft Outlook
  • Microsoft Access

See Also

• Tools:Document Metadata Extraction
• Microsoft Compound Document File Format

External Links

Microsoft.com links

• Introducing the Office (2007) Open XML File Formats
• Microsoft Office Binary File Format Documents
• Microsoft Office Binary (doc, xls, ppt) File Formats
• Ecma Office Open XML File Formats overview
• Introduction to new file name extensions and Open XML Formats

Evaluations

• Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? (And some workarounds)

Wikipedia

• Wikipedia article on Microsoft Word
• Wikipedia article on OLE