Microsoft just released Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2007 and with it supposedly came support for ODF. Unfortunately, support for ODF spreadsheets in SP2 is broken to the point of being unusable.

Anybody working in software development knows that there can be a significant discrepancy between what the marketing department is saying, and what the software can actually do. And this seems to be a prime example of just that from the masters in this art in Redmond.

Not taking their claims at face value Rob Weir over at An Antic Disposition created an actual - and extremely simple - ODF document in all the major software suites offering ODF [spreadsheet] support, and cross loaded the files in all the other ones. His test results clearly show that the ODF spreadsheet support that came with SP2 for Microsoft Office 2007 is broken to the point where it's of no actual use, e.g. Microsoft Office 2007 can only read ODF spreadsheets created in Office 2007. Not much standards support in that imho.

Rob's test is very thorough and he's got many excellent points, so I suggest you read his article on ODF spreadsheet supportin full length.

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