advice

users
#1

i don't use openoffice. with the exception of some screwball canadians who
appear to be using wordperfect every individual to whom i send a business
document uses microsoft word. i am a wordsmith, i have little use for
graphics. however my document headings are formatted to give a decent title
page. i found that when i created a simple title page in openoffice and
saved it in .doc format and then opened it with my microsoft word even the
simple text box and drawn black lines came back scrambled. when i opened a
word document in openoffice it looked perfect, but then when i simply saved
it and re-opened it in word it was scrambled again.

i would love to use libreoffice to replace my office 2007. however i need
near to absolute assurance that the document i create is going to be the
document my clients/associates/customers receive and to the best of my
knowledge every one of them will open it with some version of word.

this is far more important to me than any feature no matter what it might
be. i cannot claim to be sending a client a renoir and have them open a
picasso.

bill topp
otisville ny

#2

If you want "absolute assurance" then save/write your document to PDF format.

#3

Can you please send to me an example document? I'll see what I can do,
what bugs I can file, and what advice I can give to ensure document
fidelity.

You should also be wary of MS Office document fidelity: as it is
modeled on the printed page it depends on such arcane factors as
locale (A4 vs Letter), printer drivers (Margin sizes), screen
resolutions (I cannot figure out why, but I've seen it make a
difference), and of course MS Office version. If you want absolute
fidelity, use PDF, SVG or PNG. This is a great OOo extension for
embedding ODF documents in PDFs:
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/pdfimport

#4

i don't use openoffice. with the exception of some screwball canadians who
appear to be using wordperfect every individual to whom i send a business
document uses microsoft word. i am a wordsmith, i have little use for
graphics. however my document headings are formatted to give a decent title
page. i found that when i created a simple title page in openoffice and
saved it in .doc format and then opened it with my microsoft word even the
simple text box and drawn black lines came back scrambled. when i opened a
word document in openoffice it looked perfect, but then when i simply saved
it and re-opened it in word it was scrambled again.

I often convert with OOo and now with LO to .doc. But I never had this
problems. Please can you show us an example (jpg)?

i would love to use libreoffice to replace my office 2007. however i need
near to absolute assurance that the document i create is going to be the
document my clients/associates/customers receive and to the best of my

Please never use .doc, .odt or other formatted files for exchange of
documents. The best standard for this purpose is PDF. Convert your
documents at the end of work with LO to PDF (export to PDF) and send these
files to your clients/ associates/customers.

Have a nice day,

Joachim (Germany)

#5

Hi Bill,

bill topp wrote (28-12-10 16:08)

[...] i am a wordsmith, i have little use for
graphics. however my document headings are formatted to give a decent title
page. i found that when i created a simple title page in openoffice and
saved it in .doc format and then opened it with my microsoft word even the
simple text box and drawn black lines came back scrambled. when i opened a
word document in openoffice it looked perfect, but then when i simply saved
it and re-opened it in word it was scrambled again.

i would love to use libreoffice to replace my office 2007. however i need
near to absolute assurance that the document i create is going to be the
document my clients/associates/customers receive and to the best of my
knowledge every one of them will open it with some version of word.

this is far more important to me than any feature no matter what it might
be. i cannot claim to be sending a client a renoir and have them open a
picasso.

Understandable.
Since you do not use very complicated formatting (that is what you write), 'near to absolute assurance' can de reached if you make the right preparations.

Use styles for headings,
Tables rather then text boxes if you want to have something positioned special. Etc.
Best would be to have some tests with your needs.
Any findings and questions that you can share here, will help others to give more specific advise.

HTH,
best,
Cor

#6

Hi Bill,

bill topp wrote (28-12-10 16:08)

[...] i am a wordsmith, i have little use for
graphics. however my document headings are formatted to give a decent title
page. i found that when i created a simple title page in openoffice and
saved it in .doc format and then opened it with my microsoft word even the
simple text box and drawn black lines came back scrambled. when i opened a
word document in openoffice it looked perfect, but then when i simply saved
it and re-opened it in word it was scrambled again.

i would love to use libreoffice to replace my office 2007. however i need
near to absolute assurance that the document i create is going to be the
document my clients/associates/customers receive and to the best of my
knowledge every one of them will open it with some version of word.

this is far more important to me than any feature no matter what it might
be. i cannot claim to be sending a client a renoir and have them open a
picasso.

Understandable.
Since you do not use very complicated formatting (that is what you write), 'near to absolute assurance' can de reached if you make the right preparations.

Use styles for headings,
Tables rather then text boxes if you want to have something positioned special. Etc.
Best would be to have some tests with your needs.
Any findings and questions that you can share here, will help others to give more specific advise.

HTH,
best,
Cor

#7

I'm a freelance writer (see url below) I've done all my work in OpenOffice and
before that StarOffice for the last 6 years. I'll switch to LO when my distro
does, I can't afford to mess with beta versions on my work machine. All you
need to do is "Save as..." and choose Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP for maximum
compatibility with the rest of the world (except maybe screwball Canadians).

#8

For a very long time, the U.S. Government used Word Perfect over MS Office. I was doing a lot of Gov't contract work in the 1980s and 1990s and had to convert everything to Word Perfect (or write in it). I think with Windows, they went to MS Office. Word Perfect moved from Utah to Canada sometime when Corel bought them and it does, indeed, have a loyal following here, but the one user (a writer/editor) who I help support who bemoans her loss of WP to live in an MS-centric world also is upset over the loss of Eudora for Thunderbird.

As far as title pages go, I don't even see compatibility with "fancy" graphics among installs of MS Office of the same alleged version (i.e. 2003 to 2003) on different machines or on different printers. My two boys have come up with constructs in MS Word that self-corrupt and other things. I don't think they've switched between 2003 and 2007, but perhaps. I found I could only open one document in Word 2010 that my younger son had created in 2003.

For some reason, teachers are impressed with doodads and geegaws on title pages.

I find complete compatibility between MS Word and LO or OOO when I carefully use styles and have strict adherence to straight-line text. Once I start placing images or other stuff, then all bets are off. I've seen many corruptions in Word over the years from my writer/editor friend. I even rescued the text of an entire book for a church minister in the late 1990s from a Word corruption. We lost the formatting but recovered all the text and it went on to be published.

A thought for your title pages: make a jpg or png graphic that you drop in for most/all of it--but even then, mixing a graphic with text can create some unexpected results, especially if you treat it other than an "inline with text" arrangement.

Based on my now-more-limited use of a word processor, so far, I do think that Word 2010 is the most stable version yet, especially running under Windows 7, but I'm trying to wean myself from the MS products and am using LO far more and with fine results. There are enough differences in menu structure/ways of doing things (though not as much as between Word 2003 and Word 2007) in LO/OOO that I'd prefer not to go back and forth.

However, if you work in a Word environment--as I tell my writer/editor friend--your best bet is using the same version of Word as your client is using. My favourite version of Word is 2003, as it is the one I've used the most and know the best.

Cheers,

Richard

#9

Hi :slight_smile:

Glad to hear all that. I keep being told that MicroSquish Office doesn't do
these weird things but your experience corroborates mine :slight_smile:

I tend to avoid text-boxes and just keep it simple, as simple as possible but
with formatting. Yes, pictures do seem to jump around but by putting them
inline and formatted as simply as possible tends to mean its easy to drag them
back into the right places.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#10

Hi :slight_smile:

Or now you can choose
Tools - Options - "Load/Save"
and change all the defaults to MicroSquish Office formats. Saves a ton of time
if you regularly create a ton of documents!

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#11

Hi :slight_smile:

Yes, pdf guarantees the document looks identical on any machine and so far lives
up to that promise for me! HOwever it is difficult to use if you have to
collaborate. I tend to use pdf and then open it with Gimp to make a few changes
and then save and forward it as a gif to keep the size down. Occasionally the
pdf is much smaller than the gif. Pdf does tend to be a very light format even
woth pictures and stuff in it.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: