Ugh. Yet another reason why I won’t be recommending any of our folks upgrade to Office 2007 anytime soon.

Windows users with Office 2003 will, of course, be able to download a compatibility pack that will let them open Office 2007 files, but Mac users are being left in the cold, probably for months, while the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft takes their time in making a similar solution available to Mac users.

Office 2007 has already launched to business users, and no sign of this promised converter for Office 2004. Let’s hope they get their act together before the consumer launch at the end of January.

…or maybe not:

There will be a delta between general availability of Win Office (January) and converters from MacBU (expected late March/early April.) We realize this will be an inconvenience for some of you…For now, we recommend that Mac users advise their friends and colleagues using Office 2007 to save their documents as a “Word/Excel/PowerPoint 97-2003 Document” (.doc, .xls, .ppt) to ensure the documents can be shared across platforms.

Peachy.