For most of their 20 years, Word and Excel documents have had free rein within corporate walls. Not any more.

In the early days, workers used an array of floppy disks to shuttle documents created with the programs from department to department. E-mail let the files become even more far-flung, easily moving them among branch offices around the globe.

But with the advent of US record-keeping regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which impose strict rules on how companies manage and archive information, those freewheeling days are nearly at an end.

That's a big deal to Microsoft, which wants to make sure that however the rules change, businesses are still using Excel (and Word and PowerPoint) for their computerized files.

"We know that we've got an opportunity to provide IT the types of controls that they need for this concept that we call the 'million dollar document,' which is one of those documents or spreadsheets that (contain) a million dollars or more worth of IP (intellectual property)," Chris Capossela, a corporate vice president in Microsoft's Information Worker unit, said during a meeting at a recent company-sponsored CEO summit here. "Those have got be something that IT could control. But we still want people using Excel to be able to build them."

With the next version of Office, Microsoft plans to let businesses set rules, enforced by server-based software, to determine how those documents are handled. The shift is just one of several trends the software giant is labeling part of a "new world of work" that its next generation Office software will address. But at the same time that Microsoft is saying it understands the shifting tides, it's trying to make sure it doesn't miss any undercurrents.

Along with its long-standing research efforts, the company has stepped up its efforts to look at how different people are working, across industries and geographic boundaries as well as in different age groups. At last week's CEO summit, Microsoft gathered to discuss its vision for the future of work with a pair of chief executives, along with Tom Austin, a fellow at researcher Gartner.

During a meeting at the summit, Capossela made the case that Office, with its familiar interface, is the best way to handle even sensitive documents. It just needs to be updated to deal with new procedures for ensuring that documents are locked down when they need to be.

"It's got to be managed in a certain way," Capossela said. "You don't get to do whatever you want--you don't get to save it on your hard drive; you don't get to e-mail it around."

But one of the CEOs in the room, Bob Greifeld of the Nasdaq stock exchange, noted that it's hard to always know which documents need the extra-sensitive treatment. He pointed to a recent example where Nasdaq could have gotten in trouble with regulators because it had only the latest version of its financial models related to an acquisition.

"That's where an Excel (type program) is not ideal because of its unstructured nature," Greifeld said.

Capossela said things will change when Microsoft introduces Office 12, the next release of its productivity suite, in the second half of next year.

The company has not said exactly how it will lock down documents, but it has said that is a goal. Microsoft has been widely expected to introduce new server products in conjunction with Office 12.

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