As a follow-up to yesterday's [office document format post][3], here's a link to the [Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats][1]. Users who are running older versions of Office can install these converters and will be able to read the new file format (which has the extension .docx)

The converters are free and Windows only.

Mac users and others those that don't have any version of MS office may want to try using 
[Docx-Converter][2]. Docx-Converter is a free online document conversion service that will pull the readable text out of a .docx file and save it as plain text.

Obviously since the tile Docx-Converter generates is plain text, its far from ideal, but until the Mac converters arrive in Spring, it may be the only option available.

[1]: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466 "download Microsoft Office Compatibility pack"

[2]: http://docx-converter.com/ "Docx-Converter"
[3]: http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2006/12/office_document.html "Monkey Bites on Office Document Formats"