Re: [libreoffice-users] Problem reading Word 2003 document

Hi :)  
I think people were saying that Rtf is worth avoiding.  

Odt recently had an upgrade and is now on it's 1.2 release.  You were probably using it 2 releases 
ago when it was on 1.0.  Also it is becoming more popular now that both Apache OpenOffice and 
LibreOffice are getting developed a lot faster and bugs dealt with better now that there are far 
more devs ibn both projects (and probably some that work on both still).  So pretty soon Odt is 
likely to be something that is unavoidable.  

People often lose flash-drives, or accidentally leave them in machines,   each year a surprising 
number accidentally get dropped down the loo or into beer-glasses.  It's quite an easy target for 
people to steal.  People sometimes just pull them out of machines without using the "Safely remove 
usb-stick" things that in Windows is in the "System tray" fairly near the clock.  Drives that are 
formatted to be read by Windows (so Ntfs and all the Fats incl vFat) get corrupted easily.  So, 
flash-drives are not the safest way of storing data and any data you value should be safely on a 
proper hard-drive somewhere and backed-up from there.  

It's interesting to hear people say they have never had any trouble with something when describing 
a situation they are having trouble with it in.  My boss was telling me he has never had trouble 
with Internet Explorer but couldn't download any Pdfs.  So i tried his machine and found that 
Firefox could download the same Pdf he was having trouble with.  Then i reset his default Pdf 
reader to Foxit and found both FF and Internet Explorer could then download the Pdf.  Antivirus 
scans turned up nothing.  He switched back to using Adobe and again IE couldn't download the Pdf.  
Then he spent all afternoon fixing it during which time he said he had a similar problem on his 
home machine and it was easy to fix.  He still says he's never had any trouble with IE or Adobe.  
Sometimes we just don't notice things we are used to dealing with but grumble at the slightest 
problem we have with an unfamiliar tool.  

The advantage with Pdf is that everyone gets to see the document exactly as you intended it to be 
laid out.  The problem used to be that you would have to rely on Adobe software to read it and 
needed to pay money to buy something to produce them.  Nowadays pretty much anything can write Pdfs 
including a lot of OpenSource (usually free and also Free)  programs.  Editing them is still a bit 
of a pain but then you always have the original in an editable format such as Doc, Odt, Html or 
whatever.  

Corporate types are beginning to put too much emphasis on Pdfs and seem to think they are wonderful 
but don't seem to notice the weird jpg distortions, swirls, wakes and random artifacts that get 
added when using MS Office to create the Pdf.  LibreOffice offers many options such as uncompressed 
or adding in accessibility features for screen-readers so that blind people can read them more 
easily onscreen.  Also with LibreOffice it's easier to add in clickable links and a 
table-of-contents that jumps to the right place (or at least i've never found a Word user that 
knows how to do it in Word).  

The ideal combination seems to be to send a Pdf along with an editable format if you are 
collaborating with people and care about how it looks, especially if either you or the person at 
the other end (or both) is using Word and Word formats.  
Regards from
Tom :)  






> ________________________________
> From: Chris Carlson <cwcarlsonc@cox.net>
> To: 
> Cc: LibreOffice <users@global.libreoffice.org> 
> Sent: Thursday, 29 November 2012, 5:58
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Problem reading Word 2003 document
>
> Wow, what a lot of great responses.  Thanks, all.
>
> To answer a number of questions:
>
> I was using an older version of LO (I just got notified when I brought it up this month that a new 
> version was available).  Both versions could not open the .doc file.  The 3.5 version I am using 
> now was updated this last weekend (3.5.7.2).
>
> Word 2003 and LO are running on the same machine, running Windows 7.
>
> I didn't consider writing it as RTF and reading it into LO.  I'll try that next time.
>
> I'm guessing the LibreOffice folder is the one under "C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice.
>
> It was suggested I post the file to Nobble.  I'm willing to do that, but I don't know what that 
> is.  Google doesn't provide anything useful.
>
> I will definitely look into the Bullzip PDF printer (I've downloaded it).  I have a PDF printer 
> somewhere (when I bought OmniPage 18), but I can't seem to find the CD.  My biggest goal in 
> bringing up this issue was to help the LO developers fix a problem.  I was ultimately able to send 
> the .doc file to my work computer and generate PDF there.
>
> Just so you know, I'm not a huge fan of .PDF.  The only reason I have to provide .PDF is because 
> the company we use to print the newsletter requires it.  Apparently, the .PDF format is a lot 
> smaller, too, so it is what the American Legion suggests.  We send the newsletter to about 250 
> people each month.
>
> I tried the "Open and Repair" option (that was new to me).  It came up with a bunch of errors for 
> all the images that were in the document.  I then saved the file, but it made no difference.  It 
> still doesn't recognize it as a Word document.
>
> I tried "Save as..." with a different name.  It was said that this would do a garbage collection.  
> New name has the same problem.  It's not recognized as a Word document.
>
> Odt files: Okay, I had a bad experience with OpenOffice.  When I contacted the e-mail support 
> group, they said I shouldn't save files on a flash drive.  Then someone told me how to unpack the 
> .odt file and fix it with an editor.  Okay, that's the last time I wanted to trust the .odt 
> format.  I've heard that LibreOffice is much better maintained, but I hadn't trusted the .odt 
> format.  I usually save .doc, .rtf or .html formats.  I've never had a problem with them. Maybe I 
> should give the .odt format a try again.
>
> Thanks again for all the great suggestions.  I've got some work to do to try some of these things.
> Chris
>
>
>
> On 11/28/2012 8:48 AM, Steve Edmonds wrote:
> > On 2012-11-28 19:14, Chris Carlson wrote:
> > > I'm new to this e-mail list, so excuse me if this is something discussed already.
> > >
> > > I've been very pleased with LibreOffice on many fronts.  I recommend it to everyone.  As a 
> > > matter of fact, I use it instead of Word at every opportunity.  At work, though, I use Word 
> > > because that's what's installed.
> > >
> > > I write a newsletter for the American Legion.  Since it was developed in Word, I use my old 
> > > student copy of Word 2003 to create it each month.  I have to provide both a .doc and .pdf of 
> > > the newsletter to the printers.  My trick, since Word 2003 doesn't offer a .pdf output, is to 
> > > read the .doc with LibreOffice (3.5) and publish it to .pdf.
> > >
> > > For the first time in months, LibreOffice can't seem to recognize the .doc format.  I'm using 
> > > the same version of Word that I've used for months.  The newsletter is basically the same file, 
> > > which I copy and modify for the new month.  For whatever reason, LibreOffice tries to open it 
> > > as a text file.  It initially asks what text encoding it should use, waits for a long time, and 
> > > then opens a garbage document.
> > >
> > > Is this a known problem?  Did I do something to the document that caused it to be read 
> > > incorrectly?
> > >
> > > Thanks for any ideas on this.
> > >
> > > Chris
> > Hi.
> > Did you update your version of LO. Possibly this is related to the thread with subject  MS 
> > Office MacIntosh to Libre Writer Windows. There was a bug filed 
> > (<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53909>) and seems to apply to LO > 3.5.4 and LO < 
> > 3.6.4.
> > Steve
>
>
> -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+help@global.libreoffice.org
> Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
> Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
> List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
> All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
-- 
For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+help@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted