When the time comes to pick and download a suite of office applications, we can expect that the MS Office suite will dominate the conversation. Each application included in the MS Office package comes equipped with dozens of powerful, intuitive features, and all the OpenXML file formats – .DOCX, .XLSX, PPTX, etc. – can shoulder the burden of immense, data-intensive edits and developer customizations while retaining a relatively small file size through efficient compartmentalization and lossless compression.

However, OpenXML files aren’t the only ones represented in XML and zipped into convenient lossless file containers. The Apache OpenOffice suite – which originated in 2006, right around the timeframe when OpenXML format became standard for MS Office files – also offers XML-based file structure with lossless Zip compression, and this option makes for a nice alternative to OpenXML files when cost considerations come into play.