The selection of a default document format could affect, to a certain extent, the manner in which you can use Microsoft Office and the way you exchange documents with users of other productivity applications. Document formats were initially developed to reflect the features and behavior of one or more applications (the features and behavior of productivity applications can be quite different). For example, OpenDocument Format (ODF) was originally developed to reflect the features and behavior of OpenOffice-based productivity suites and OpenXML was originally developed to reflect the features and behavior of Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office now provides support for ODF and gives Microsoft Office users the opportunity to save their documents in ODF. However, because Microsoft Office and OpenOffice features are not exactly the same or are not implemented the same way, Microsoft Office users who use the Unsupported Features (see below for a list of links for these features) and save documents in ODF may experience changes in the editability of the document and sometimes see a loss of content.
For more information on the level of support in ODF 1.1 for commonly used features of Office, see the links below. This shows which Office features are fully, partially, or not supported in the ODF 1.1 format.
To learn more about ODF generally, see:
To learn more about the differences in file formats, see: