Default file save format to MSOffice (doc, xls, ppt) etc..

users
#21

Marcello:

  Excuse me but the problem is to think that the program problem is
LO/Ooo. The main think for this program is funtion well in their owns
formats (Open standard Format). Try to help people whom using ms is an
extra feature but not an obligation.

  When someone try to make changes (House, home, job and many others like
this), should try to do step by step until get the all changes. I
suggest you to install your last msoficce that you have in your company
in all pc and make the change step by step:

1) Explain to employees in good terms, how necesary is to make the
change. How important are the four libertys for your company and them
that offer the open sourse (Free software).

2) Keep installed both program in each computer, and start to make the
change. Give good instruccion and manuals to your employees about
Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Math, Draw. Assure that they read, practice
and learn in a good time. Then, the new documents have to make in LO,
and the documents alreary made that are recognized by LO, too; using the
LO native formats (Open Standard Format). But if the employees have
tecnical problems that are dificults to solve, they would use
msoffice ... while they find the correct answers in LO.

3) Assure that in your company there aren't lazy people that resist for
only resist to make the change.

4) Those steps are the first step to change in the future the operative
system and start to use Linux (You have to study what is the best for
your company) and you would do the change following that steps that I
expose you.

Regards and I hope you get the goal !

Jorge Rodríguez

#22

Marcello:

  Excuse me but the problem is to think that the program problem is
LO/Ooo. The main think for this program is funtion well in their owns
formats (Open standard Format). Try to help people whom using ms is an
extra feature but not an obligation.

  When someone try to make changes (House, home, job and many others like
this), should try to do step by step until get the all changes. I
suggest you to install your last msoficce that you have in your company
in all pc and make the change step by step:

1) Explain to employees in good terms, how necesary is to make the
change. How important are the four libertys for your company and them
that offer the open sourse (Free software).

2) Keep installed both program in each computer, and start to make the
change. Give good instruccion and manuals to your employees about
Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Math, Draw. Assure that they read, practice
and learn in a good time. Then, the new documents have to make in LO,
and the documents alreary made that are recognized by LO, too; using the
LO native formats (Open Standard Format). But if the employees have
tecnical problems that are dificults to solve, they would use
msoffice ... while they find the correct answers in LO.

3) Assure that in your company there aren't lazy people that resist for
only resist to make the change.

4) Those steps are the first step to change in the future the operative
system and start to use Linux (You have to study what is the best for
your company) and you would do the change following that steps that I
expose you.

Regards and I hope you get the goal !

Jorge Rodríguez
_________________

Now if you reread your comment and the one I was replying to you'll notice a difference: you write sound suggestions to acheive a smooth migration, e-letter instead writes insults to the OP.

This is what I was replying to.

#23

My comment on this "benefit" issue is the following:

Reading and writing ODF is the way I hope the "world of Office Suite default formats" go to. Until then, a office suite needs to be able to read/write the other file formats used my the market-place. Right now MS formats dominate the market. When a person [or company], say using Mac or Linux, wants to create a document for their use, then ODF is fine and maybe preferred. Now if that same document needs to be shared to others, these other people will most likely have MSO, so you will need to save the document as .doc or other MSO format for their use. As time progresses, you can tell friends and associates about the benefits of LO and see if you can persuade them to give LO a try.

Right now, I am setting up a system for a group home. It will be Ubuntu/Edubuntu instead of Windows due to money issues. Also the same money issue is used for not buying MSO, if I had a Windows OS system for their use. They will be typing documents to be shared with agencies that have MSO-only. So the fact that LO reads/writes ODF as well as MSO file formats works for them. They may not want to use and ODF formats, for now. Later, they may start looking into using ODF instead, as the need arises.

I believe ODF is the future. MS wanted their "open formats" to be the future so they would have the control over it, instead of using ODF where no one company is in control. MS wants to control everything to do with the office suite and computer software markets. They are loosing that control slowly. They are now using a form of ODF in the most current office packages, so ODF is slowly creeping into MS's world.

So to answer the question: ODF is the future, but for now you must be able to use the other file formats that are part of the office market-place.

#24

MS wants to control everything to do with the office suite and computer software markets.

Agree with that - witness the debate on the UEFI Secure Boot that MS will be requiring OEM Vendors to implement in order to carry the "Windows 8" logo on their products.
Read about that here: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/some-w8-pcs-wont-turn-secure-boot-red-hat-warns

They are loosing that control slowly. They are now using a form of ODF in the most current office packages, so ODF is slowly creeping into MS's world.

There are even people on the MS Answers forum recommending LO as a replacement Office suite!
However some of the implementation of ODF in MS Office 2007 is broken - for example if you open an ODS document in Excel all the formulae are stripped out to be replaced by values only! (What use is that I ask myself?) Whether that has been fixed in Office 2010 I don't know. (I don't intend to find out unless I am forced to!)

So to answer the question: ODF is the future, but for now you must be able to use the other file formats that are part of the office market-place.

I certainly agree with that - there will come a time when critical mass may force the opposite!

#25

> I think other formats than ODF should be considered only as export
> formats, like pdf is. Work in ODF, save in ODF and, if you have to send
> your file, choose an export format accordingly to the usage of the file.
> If receiver of the document does not need to modify the file, pdf is the
> right format. If he needs to modify the document and is not able to work
> with ODF (nobody is perfect), then you should export your document to
> doc (MS-Office 97/2000/XP). But your ODF version should always be your
> reference version.
>

By coincedence, was thinking about this whilst looking at the menu bar
'file'. There are 'save as' and 'export' options.

Wouldn't be better from a design perspective to use the 'save as'
option only for odf formats, and the option 'export' for non-odf (pdf,
png, html, etc.) formats?

Short answer - No. I have using desktop computers since the Apple II.
Sharing files between different users, computers, and programs has
always been necessary. The only difference now is the existence of open
formats along with a variety of proprietary and semi-proprietary
formats. If you want people to use your program you must support the
common file types in use for the type of program regardless of the
openness of the type. Time changes the list but does not change the
reality.

#26

Well, if the below article [link] is true, and long time "fans" of MS Windows do not like it, they might want to look into some replacement for it, like Ubuntu. At best though, then might live with Win8, but switch away from MSO in favor to LO. It is much easier to drop MSO than Windows and MSO. One reason why many people did not like MSO 2007 was the new "ribbon" design for its menus. I read an article that stated the menu system of Win8 will be a version of a "ribbon" menu system, making it harder to use if you want to do more than the "default" thinks being done with a tablet "pc". If you want to setup you desktop different than the defaults, you will have a struggle, compared to previous versions.

So if Win8 and the next version of MS Office are going to have some degree of "radical redesign", then LibreOffice will benefit from people leaving the MS market.

Also MS/ODF file format was never any good. They really do not want to use that open format, since they have their own. 2007 version of ODF is much worse than 2010's version, so I have been told. There was the Sun "filter", which I had with my last version of MSO [2003], and I was told it worked better than MSO's ODF version included. I wonder if you can use that "filter" with 2007? I has 2003 and that filter on an XP and a Vista laptops when I was running MSO with OOo. Have not used MSO for almost 2 years now, so I do not know how well things work with it anymore. I switched to Ubuntu and LO for my desktop and one of my two laptops. One Windows system was needed for one of my USB devices, but I do not have MSO on it any more.

#27

Yes you can, and it works much better (as you said) than the built-in MSO filters.
Unfortunately if you don't have a copy already then Sun require payment for it now, unless you know someone like me who got it when it was free!

#28

Am 03.10.2011 18:28, Gordon Burgess-Parker wrote:

I wonder if you can use that "filter" with 2007?

Yes you can, and it works much better (as you said) than the built-in
MSO filters.
Unfortunately if you don't have a copy already then Sun require payment
for it now, unless you know someone like me who got it when it was free!

Here you are:

#29

I know I had it on one of my backup DVDs. I will look for it when I have a chance.

#30

Vinod Nadiadwala <thinwala <at> gmail.com> writes:

Hi,
    I am migrating my company's pc to libreoffice on windows, all my users
are using windows terminal services, now i want to set default file save
format to MS-Office i.e. .doc, .xls, .ppt to all users.

    I know how to do it manually, but i want to it to be applied to all
users using some registry entry or configuration file, is there any way to
do it, as i have 200+ pc's in my company and configuring each user is some
hectic job, let me know if solution if anybody have.

Thanks for the great job LibreOffice developers,

Vino

The responses so far have been extremely helpful, but let me be even more
helpful and tell you how to accomplish what you want. Inside the Program Files
folder, you'll see the LibreOffice application folder. Open it and navigate to
the following folder:

\Basis3.4\share\registry

Use a text editor to alter three files in that "registry" folder.

The first is writer.xcd

Open the writer.xcd file with Notepad, and make the following change:

The line that reads as follows . . .

<prop oor:name="ooSetupFactoryDefaultFilter"><value>writer8</value>

. . . should be changed to read:

<prop oor:name="ooSetupFactoryDefaultFilter"><value>MS Word 97</value>

Next, open the calc.xcd file with Notepad, and make the following change:

The line that reads as follows . . .

<prop oor:name="ooSetupFactoryDefaultFilter"><value>calc8</value>

. . . should be changed to read:

<prop oor:name="ooSetupFactoryDefaultFilter"><value>MS Excel 97</value>

Finally, open the impress.xcd file with Notepad, and make the following change:

The line that reads as follows . . .

<prop oor:name="ooSetupFactoryDefaultFilter"><value>impress8</value>

. . . should be changed to read:

<prop oor:name="ooSetupFactoryDefaultFilter"><value>MS PowerPoint 97</value>

Now, all users will default to .doc, .xls, and .ppt when they go to File > Save.

#31

Another way that does not involve editing any files is this:

Tools > Options > Load/Save > General

In the right panel near the bottom are two drop-downs: Document type and
Always save as.

Select the doc type -- say, text document -- and then select Microsoft
Word 97/etc. in the save as box.

(I'd click OK here but it may not be necessary to do that until you've
set all three.)

Similarly for spreadsheet and presentation.

Charlotte18 has written on 11/2/2011 6:48 PM:

#32

Yes, but the OP states that he knows how to set the Load/Save settings in the
GUI. He wants to use a configuration file to push MS defaults to all users.

I responded with instructions to accomplish his specific request. Many other
responders here berated the OP and, although they're obviously experts in all
things LibreOffice and in computing ethics, they withheld their "expert"
knowledge because they hold ideological opinions that are at odds with the OP.

#33

Charlotte18 has written on 11/2/2011 9:23 PM:

Yes, but the OP states that he knows how to set the Load/Save settings in the
GUI. He wants to use a configuration file to push MS defaults to all users.

I missed that.

I responded with instructions to accomplish his specific request.

It seemed to me that your instructions required the OP to visit each
machine and carry out your steps. Unless you're suggesting that the OP
create new files and copy them to each machine?

#34

Hi :slight_smile:
I thought Charlotte's answer looked excellent. ES Champ's is the one i am
more familiar with. I think both only set-up for a single machine?

If so then you could copy the config folder as that contains all the
settings, templates, galleries and extensions/add-ons/plugins and so on.
This thread might help explain
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=12426

Somewhere in OpenOffice.org there were some excellent instructions for
corporate deployments.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#35

It seemed to me that your instructions required the OP to visit each
machine and carry out your steps. Unless you're suggesting that the OP
create new files and copy them to each machine?

My impression is that the OP intends to build an image with the configuration
file for cloning multiple PCs, or he intends to write a script to push the files
out to the Program Files folder across the domain.