Data Portability

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The Data Portability section provides detailed Open Specifications technical documents for certain file formats created by Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook and by SQL Server. Additionally, the documentation describes how user-created data in SQL Server can be extracted for use in other software products.

Although the Open Specifications technical documents are freely available, many of them include patented inventions. Some of these patents are available at no charge under the Open Specifications Promise or the Microsoft Community Promise. The remaining patents are available through various licensing programs. For more information, please visit the Microsoft Open Specifications Dev Center website or send an email message to the IP Licensing Team.

Forums and Blogs

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Open Specifications Forums

These MSDN user forums are available to answer technical questions about the Open Specifications documents

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Open Specifications Blogs

These blogs, authored by the engineers who support the Open Specifications documents, provide a different venue for further discussion of those documents.

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