Microsoft Office OpenXML to ODF Standard Transalation Software

Version 1 of open source software to translate from Microsoft Office 2007's OpenXML format to Open Office's standard ODF is available:

Open XML Translator provides tools to build a technical bridge between the Open XML Formats and Open Document Format(ODF). As the first component of this initiative, the ODF Add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 allows to Open & Save ODF documents in Word.

From: Open XML Translator: Release 1.0 now avalaible!, OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office, ollie_d, SourceForge, 2007-02-05 22:45

As well as an add-in for Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and Excell, there is a command line interface available. There is a detailed list of what is and is not supported:

The ODF-Converters (cooresponding to Word translator, Excel translator and PowerPoint translator) translate OpenXML documents, spreadsheets and presentations (.DOCX, .XLSX and .PPTX) to Open Document Formats - ODF 1.0 formats (.ODF, .ODS and .ODP respectively) and conversely, for Open XML processing applications.

From: Features, OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office

Unfortunately the software requires you to have Microsoft software installed. That is, the translation allows you to create OpenOffice documents, using Microsoft Office, without a copy of OpenOffice. But you can't create Microsoft 2007 OpenXML format documents from Open Office. So this is not as great an advance as it would first seem.

The OpenOffice software is free and runs on Linux and Apple systems as well as Microsoft Windows. It already supports the old Microsoft Office formats and so could be sued to translate from Microsoft to ODF formats. What would be handy is a standalone OpenXML to ODF translator. But that would be considerably harder than an Office add-on.