Zettelkasten Forum


Vendor Lock-in

In a 2014 blog post, Christian writes

On the other hand, one could say that as long as Microsoft exists, there’ll be a Microsoft Word. If Microsoft as a company outlives us, then we’re going to be able to rely on .doc files for our entire lifetime.

Well, last night I tried to open a Word file last saved in July 1998. This message popped up:

Error message when opening an old Word file in Office 365.

Clicking the link in the message leads to some "helpful" suggestions, like trying using TextEdit to open it. It then says:

So even the venerable Microsoft cannot be relied on. :( (By the way, I was able to open the file with an old version of Word.)

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