by , 7:55 AM EDT, June 25th, 2008

Microsoft released Office 2004 11.5, Office 2008 12.1.1, and Open XML Converter Tuesday evening. The updates are designed to improve overall application stability and enhance support for the new Office file format standard in both versions of the app suite.

Office 2004 11.5 improved application stability and compatibility with Office 2008 for the Mac and Office 2007 for Windows documents. With the just released Open XML Converter installed, Office 2004 11.5 can read and save Open XML Format documents.

Open XML Converter handles the process of converting Open XML Format files from Office 2008 for Mac or Office 2007 for Windows so that they can opened, edited, and saved in Office 2004 and v. X for Mac. It supports Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, and can batch convert documents.

Office 2008 12.1.1 corrected issues with chart dates, fixed a problem that prevented Word and Excel 2008 SP1 from opening double-clicked documents, addressed an issue where Notebook Layout documents could lose data, and also addressed several other several stability issues.

The updates and Open XML Converter are free and available for download at the Microsoft Web site.