Since the launching of Office 2007 in the Philippines last February, documents with the Open XML format, Office 2007's native format, have been steadily gaining circulation. For a lot of us, the document attachments we get in our inboxes are important, and sometimes, even mission-critical.

For users of older versions of MS Office, we have the Office Compatibility Pack which lets us open, edit and save documents in Office 2007's native format. But Windows Mobile users have been left out in the cold. Ever since the launching of Office 2007 last February, about 8 months long, Office 2007 documents cannot be opened in Windows Mobile, until now.

Today, Microsoft has released Microsoft Office Mobile 6.1 Upgrade for Windows Mobile.

Microsoft Office 2007 introduced new Open XML-based file formats for Office applications. These new file formats reduce file size, improve security and reliability, and enhance integration with external sources.
To allow Windows Mobile users to work with Office documents created in the Open XML formats, Microsoft has developed an upgrade for Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, and PowerPoint Mobile applications. This upgrade to the Office Mobile applications allows viewing and editing of Word documents and Excel workbooks and viewing of PowerPoint slideshows created by using Microsoft Office 2007.

Other improvements include:
• Enhanced viewing experience for charts in Excel Mobile.
• Ability to view SmartArt in PowerPoint Mobile.
• Ability to view and extract files from compressed (.zip) folders.

I'm glad Microsoft came out with this. But why did it take too long? Download the file now from the Microsoft website and install in your respective Windows Mobile device.