I posted a couple of blog posts earlier today (Open Source and Microsoft Office) relating my story regarding the lack of support for the Open Office .osd file format in Microsoft Office 2007. I was surprised that the .osd XML-based format was not readable by Excel — after all, the native .xslx file format is XML too. Shouldn’t they work together?

I think they should, but they don’t — so I had to come up with a Plan B. This is where the Web site Media-Convert stepped in to save the day. Enter a file in one box, specify what you want it to output, and click the Convert button. After a few minutes of grinding, you are presented a link to your converted file, which you then download to your PC. It was relatively painless and quicker then I had imagined. Best of all, it worked. I converted two Open Office spreadsheets in .osd format to Excel 2003 .xsl format.

Why that conversion is not part of Office 2007 has not been explained to me yet. Perhaps the discussions stemming off the blog posts can explain it. In the meantime, if you come across a situation requiring the conversion of just about any file type into just about any other file type, the Media-Convert Web site is one place try. If only everything worked as well as advertised.