IPad?

The_Wolfkin · May 10, 2012, 12:33pm

i think i wasn't quite clear on this.. but my annoyance wasn't with people
using Word. I get that. Believe me I fully understand how complicated it is
for people to change the file format. My annoyance was with MS for making
.docx the default because it means anytime someone sends me something for
help it's going to be .docx and that's frustrating for me to work with.
Nothing to do about it.

jomali · May 10, 2012, 12:50pm

send it back to them as .doc. They never notice, and then it's a .doc
forever.

Tom_Davies · May 10, 2012, 2:02pm

Hi
Smart move! :) I like it
Regards from
Tom

Tom_Davies · May 10, 2012, 2:16pm

Hi
+1
I find it a total pita too. Do you get blank looks from people when you ask them to send in a different format? Do you find people treat you with suspicion or treat you as being deliberately difficult? Do you get blamed when their formats turn out to appear broken when viewed on any machine other than their own?

When i installed MSO 2010 on the machines here i deliberately set it to default to Doc instead of DocX but then felt guilty and worried i would get the blame if anything happened so i set it back
Regards from
Tom

The_Wolfkin · May 10, 2012, 9:44pm

I'm pretty good at people and I know full and well that they don't have the
skill to change it to .doc or the patience for me to explain why. I'm like
an inverse human. Rather than adapting my environment to suit myself. I
expend most of my energy to adapt my practices to suit my environment. If I
get .docx files I generally either open it as it and roll the dice or find
a computer with a version of Office compatible.

James_Knott · May 11, 2012, 1:42am

The Wolfkin wrote:

I'm pretty good at people and I know full and well that they don't have the
skill to change it to .doc or the patience for me to explain why. I'm like
an inverse human. Rather than adapting my environment to suit myself. I
expend most of my energy to adapt my practices to suit my environment. If I
get .docx files I generally either open it as it and roll the dice or find
a computer with a version of Office compatible.

Something that may come in handy are the free Word, Excel and PowerPoint viewers from Microsoft. These will allow you to view MS Office documents, though not edit them.

Tom_Davies · May 11, 2012, 7:51am

Hi
They might be good on Windows machines but i suspect they are not perfect at reading DocX either. MSO 2010 implements DocX differently from 2007 and according to Microsoft's 2010 installer it can be different on different on different versions of Windows, ie different between 2010 on Xp and 2010 on Win7.

So i think it's well worth trying just in case it does work well
Regards from
Tom

Villeroy · May 11, 2012, 9:58am

Am 11.05.2012 09:51, Tom Davies wrote:

Hi
They might be good on Windows machines but i suspect they are not perfect at reading DocX either. MSO 2010 implements DocX differently from 2007 and according to Microsoft's 2010 installer it can be different on different on different versions of Windows, ie different between 2010 on Xp and 2010 on Win7.

So i think it's well worth trying just in case it does work well
Regards from
Tom

Of course they do work very well. These viewers come from the people having the source code of the one and only reference implementation and not only the format specs.
3 viewers to read 7 file formats[*] in 155 MB. This is a higher download volume than the full blown AOO suite.

[*] rtf, doc(x), xls(x), ppt(x) not including the XML formats of 2003
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13 [60MB]
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4 [24MB]
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=10 [71MB]

The_Wolfkin · May 11, 2012, 9:37pm

wait.. ALL of them have viewers now? I knew about the PP viewer but having
a word viewer and excel viewer would be fantastic... thanks guy

James_Knott · May 12, 2012, 1:01am

The Wolfkin wrote:

wait.. ALL of them have viewers now?

They've been around for years. I was using a Word viewer on OS/2 about 15 years ago.

Steve_Edmonds1 · May 12, 2012, 3:53am

I was using star office on OS/2 15 years ago.

The_Wolfkin · May 12, 2012, 5:46am

wow... news to me. I discovered the powerpoint viewer years ago but the
headaches I could have saved if I had known there was a doc viewer....

James_Knott · May 12, 2012, 11:31am

Steve Edmonds wrote:

I was using star office on OS/2 15 years ago.

While I had Star Office, I used Describe back then.

Steve_Edmonds1 · May 13, 2012, 6:48am

Had that too, and Mesa that had some functionality generally still not found today.

Tom_Davies · May 13, 2012, 7:37am

Hi
It would be great to add those ideas as "feature requests"
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/BugReport

They might not get worked on but someone might get interested and add it.
Regards from
Tom

James_Knott · May 13, 2012, 11:52am

Many OS/2 apps had features that would be difficult or impossible to do elsewhere, as they relied on features of OS/2 that are not available with other operating systems. It was capable of many things that I have never seen elsewhere.

Tom Davies wrote:

Dotan_Cohen · May 13, 2012, 4:27pm

Note that those will note open .docx files:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891090
"Please note that there was not a Word Viewer created for Word Viewer
2007 or Word Viewer 2010. To view Word 2007 and 2010 documents, please
download the following link and install the Office Compatibility Pack
noted below"

I like the typos on the MS site! The "following link" links to an
Office Compatibility Pack for older versions of MS Office, so those
with no MS Office installed cannot view Word 2007/2010 files.

Note that the online MS Office works just fine in Firefox on Linux, bt
you need to open an account:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/online-software.aspx

Dotan_Cohen · May 13, 2012, 4:34pm

Sorry, there is a free, reduced version available under a different
name as well:
http://office2010.microsoft.com/en-us/web-apps/

Brian_Barker · May 13, 2012, 4:50pm

Note that those [the freeware Microsoft viewers for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint document files] will not open .docx files: ...

Natively, this is true, but read on ...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891090 "Please note that there was not a Word Viewer created for Word Viewer 2007 or Word Viewer 2010. To view Word 2007 and 2010 documents, please download the following link and install the Office Compatibility Pack noted below"

I like the typos on the MS site! The "following link" links to an Office Compatibility Pack for older versions of MS Office, so those with no MS Office installed cannot view Word 2007/2010 files.

I think you miss the point here: the instruction is both to download (the viewer) and install the Compatibility Pack.

The Compatibility Pack is indeed intended for systems with Microsoft Office XP (2002) or 2003 and it enables those versions of Office, as modified, to open, edit, and save documents in the new "x" formats. But it is equally applicable to the freeware viewers (which are effectively cut-down versions of components of Office 2003) and enables the viewers, as similarly modified, to open, display, and print documents in the newer formats too.

Brian Barker

Brian_Barker · May 13, 2012, 5:01pm

This not a foolproof solution. There are new functionalities in Word 2007 and 2010, of course, that can be saved in .docx but not in .doc format. If the originator of your document has used any of these (whether or not they understand the problem) some facet of their document will be missing when you return it to them. In this case they will notice. They might not understand how, but they will know that you broke their document!

Brian Barker