[Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac][1] uses the new [Office Open XML][2] formats by default
which is a pain in an office where many staff will be using previous versions
for some time.

You can easily change the default save format within the preferences for Word,
Excel and PowerPoint, but the simplest thing when deploying Office 2008 to a
whole bunch of machines is to set the default format once and have every user
pick up that setting.

Fortunately Microsoft Office 2008 uses the [system defaults database][3] and even
honours preferences from the Library domain.

Here’s the preference files in `/Library/Preferences` for Excel, PowerPoint
and Word:

computer:~ david$ ls -al /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.*
-rw-r–r– 1 root admin 256 29 Jan 14:21 com.microsoft.Excel.plist
-rw-r–r– 1 root admin 301 29 Jan 14:21 com.microsoft.Powerpoint.plist
-rw-r–r– 1 root admin 257 29 Jan 14:14 com.microsoft.Word.plist

Contents of the Excel plist to save in Excel 97-2004 Workbook (.xls) format by default:

computer:~ david$ cat /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.plist


2008\Default Save\Default Format
57

I wonder what the significance of 57 is… Probably meaningful in hex or something.

PowerPoint plist to save as PowerPoint 97-2004 Presentation (.ppt) by default:

computer:~ david$ cat /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Powerpoint.plist


2008\Default Save\Default Save\Default Format
Microsoft PowerPoint 98 Presentation

Word plist to save as Word 97-2004 Document (.doc) by default:

tfg02215-2:Preferences dbuxton$ cat /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist


2008\Default Save\Default Format
Doc97

Let’s create these all using the `defaults` command in one go:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel “2008\Default Save\Default Format” -int 57
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Powerpoint “2008\Default Save\Default Save\Default Format” “Microsoft PowerPoint 98 Presentation”
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word “2008\Default Save\Default Format” “Doc97”

Sweet.

Now any new user on that machine will pick up these preferences and will use
the old formats by default (but can choose to use the new formats by changing
preferences if necessary).

[1]: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/
[2]: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338205.aspx
[3]: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/UserDefaults/