Support for Microsoft Office 2007 New File Formats in the Blackboard Academic Suite
Posted on 6/5/2007 on http://www.blackboard.com

Support for Microsoft Office 2007 New File Formats in the Blackboard Academic Suite
Microsoft Office 2007 introduces a new file format for Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint files.

The new file format is XML-based and automatically compresses when saved and decompresses when opened using zip compression technology. New file name extensions are included with these new file formats. As a result, Microsoft Office Word files which were appended with .doc are now, in general, appended with .docx. There are also further file formats that represent templates and, for security reasons, clearly identify files that rely on Visual Basic macros. For the most part, users will be working with the .docx extension.
The new file name extensions are not recognized as supported MIME types in the Blackboard Academic Suite. As a result of the unrecognized file name extension and the use of zip compression technology, Microsoft Office 2007 files that are uploaded to the Blackboard Academic Suite appear with a .ZIP file name extension instead of the appropriate Microsoft Office 2007 file name extension.

What does this mean for Moravian students and instructors who use public labs and computer classrooms?

All public labs and classrooms as well as most faculty computers have Office 2007 installed. The default format for a saved Office document is in the new XML format with the .docx, .xlsx, .pptx extensions. Users can choose to File -> Save As and change the format to previous versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

Instructors can choose what will be the acceptable format for posted documents for each individual Blackboard course. This is not a Blackboard technical issue, rather a Blackboard user issue.

What does this mean for students and instructors who use their own personal computer and they do not have Office 2007?

1) Viewers. If someone posts a document in Blackboard and it is saved in the new XML format, you will require a 'viewer' to view the document. Viewers are freely available for the PC and are not currently available for the Macintosh.

download FileFormatConverter
download Readme.txt
see also Microsoft's Office 2007 site.

2) Request document be resaved in different format and reposted to Blackboard course shell. Macintosh users must either request the instructor/student repost the document in a saved previous version of Office.

3) View the document on a Moravian public lab or classroom computer which runs Office 2007.

† designates viewable on Moravian's Intranet - on campus only

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Last Update:
October 26, 2009