LO Writer 3.4.0 --- basic .doc/.odt files not understood properly by MS Office 2010

users
#1

LibreOffice Writer 3.4.0 running under Windows 7 64-bit.

Problem 1 reproduction -
* Start Writer
* Create a document and type in a few words, nothing special or extravagant
* Save as an .odt file
* Load into MS Office 2010

Error message:
The file <filename> cannot be opened because there are problems with the
contents.

Details
The file is corrupt and cannot be opened.

Clicking OK asks if you want to recover the contents of the document. The
recovered document is correct and uncorrupted.

#2

At0mic ha scritto:

Clicking OK asks if you want to recover the contents of the document. The
recovered document is correct and uncorrupted.

Can you post a sample document? I don't see such behavior.

Regards,

Gianluca

#3

http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/file/n3023257/Test.odt Test.odt
Just a simple .odt with the word Test in it. Should load fine in Writer, but
complains for me in Word 2010.

#4

Hi :slight_smile:
Please file a bug-report
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/BugReport

<rant>
Oh, you know you can use it happily and safely. It's just MS trying to force
people to buy their product by pretending that other things are suspicious. Why
people continue to believe MS is beyond me. There are so many reports over the
years about their formats being infected or transmitting malware (by their style
of macros mostly and ActiveX if that's used) whereas absolutely none seem to
have been transmitted by Open Document Formats.

However, it does mean that you can't send anything to MS users without looking
either bad or superior (depending on the person but usually bad).

People that want to appear to be security concious use MS products with stacks
of anti-malware and intriguingly sophisticated ways of working to avoid or check
sites they visit. But people that are really serious about security and just
want to run robust systems without spending hours and hours on keeping it free
from malware run a *nix and OpenSource rather than risking letting malware hide
in proprietary code that no-one can read or fix. Intriguingly most anti-virus
programs claim that about 20% of Windows machines are infected but MS produced
one that claimed it was more like 80% and this was heralded as a good thing
because the MS antivirus was 'more thorough'. Despite false positives and all
that i still think that 100% or Windows machines are infected as Windows itself
acts more like a trojan than most trojans imo.

</rant>

The important thing is perception. While you are safe and your files are safe
people wont tend to believe that and it might damage their long-term view of how
much they can trust you.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

From: At0mic <atomicbutterfly83@gmail.com>
To: users@libreoffice.org
Sent: Sat, 4 June, 2011 15:18:31
Subject: [libreoffice-users] LO Writer 3.4.0 --- basic .doc/.odt files not
understood properly by MS Office 2010

LibreOffice Writer 3.4.0 running under Windows 7 64-bit.

Problem 1 reproduction -
* Start Writer
* Create a document and type in a few words, nothing special or extravagant
* Save as an .odt file
* Load into MS Office 2010

Error message:
The file <filename> cannot be opened because there are problems with the
contents.

Details
The file is corrupt and cannot be opened.

Clicking OK asks if you want to recover the contents of the document. The
recovered document is correct and uncorrupted.

-----

Problem 2 reproduction -
* Start Writer
* Create another document and type in a few words
* Save as a .doc file (97/2000/XP)
* Load into MS Office 2010

Red toolbar message:
Protected view - Office has detected a problem with this file. Editing it
may harm your computer. Click here for details.

It is then possible to click "Edit anyway" and get on with things. The
loaded file is correct and uncorrupted.

---

In the past I've never had problems with basic files working between both
word processors, but something has happened which is causing Office 2010 to
dislike both the .doc and .odt versions of the files LO is saving. This is
not a good thing. I'll refrain from calling it a bug in case there's an
option within LO which can save the files in such a way as to pacify Office
2010. Otherwise I can't trust it to be usable in a mixed environment.

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#5

The whole open source/proprietary war is pointless because each side uses
lies and hyperbole to win various arguments. The open source side is not
innocent of using FUD, sorry. Windows 7 is nice, better than most Linux
distros for desktop use in my opinion, and no-one is going to change my mind
by spewing anti-MS comments that do not negate the flaws in the competition.
I dislike Microsoft as much as the next person, but I (currently) despise a
lot about Linux for desktop use as well, hence the use of Windows 7.

Needless to say this doesn't have anything to do with my problem. This
problem I'm having has never happened to me before (at least with
OpenOffice), so I'm wondering what's going on. I can live with a few
comparability issues such as formatting, but if Writer is writing a broken
form of the .doc format when it used to work, I'd like to know what's going
on.

Interestingly enough, the .docx format works perfectly for my little test...

#6

Hi :slight_smile:
Agreed, well mostly. I think filing a bug-report about it is important.

Win7 is a huge improvement.

Lol about the docX format coming out unflagged. As you know that is the one we
usually have most trouble with. The old doc is usually fine except for a few
pics and boxs moving around slightly sometimes.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

From: At0mic <atomicbutterfly83@gmail.com>
To: users@libreoffice.org
Sent: Sat, 4 June, 2011 15:53:05
Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: LO Writer 3.4.0 --- basic .doc/.odt files not
understood properly by MS Office 2010

The whole open source/proprietary war is pointless because each side uses
lies and hyperbole to win various arguments. The open source side is not
innocent of using FUD, sorry. Windows 7 is nice, better than most Linux
distros for desktop use in my opinion, and no-one is going to change my mind
by spewing anti-MS comments that do not negate the flaws in the competition.
I dislike Microsoft as much as the next person, but I (currently) despise a
lot about Linux for desktop use as well, hence the use of Windows 7.

Needless to say this doesn't have anything to do with my problem. This
problem I'm having has never happened to me before (at least with
OpenOffice), so I'm wondering what's going on. I can live with a few
comparability issues such as formatting, but if Writer is writing a broken
form of the .doc format when it used to work, I'd like to know what's going
on.

Interestingly enough, the .docx format works perfectly for my little test...

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#7

BTW, don't take the above personally Tom. Wasn't directly at you personally.
I'm just not a fan of reading rants when I've got a critical issue on my
hands.

But thank you for the Bugzilla link. It helped direct me to this:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37516

It's for the .doc problem. Looks like they don't consider a big fat warning
to be a blocking bug. Oh well, not like I'm paying for LibreOffice. Can't
complain right?

#8

Hi :slight_smile:
It wasn't taken personally, don't worry. The important bit of the 1st mail was
the link, i bracketed the rest :wink:

I think the bug is new. It might be producing the same result as a previous bug
but it's not happened in 3.3.2 or 3.3.1 or even 3.3.0 afaik so it needs to be
fixed. And for the odt too :slight_smile:
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

From: At0mic <atomicbutterfly83@gmail.com>
To: users@libreoffice.org
Sent: Sat, 4 June, 2011 16:02:30
Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: LO Writer 3.4.0 --- basic .doc/.odt files not
understood properly by MS Office 2010

BTW, don't take the above personally Tom. Wasn't directly at you personally.
I'm just not a fan of reading rants when I've got a critical issue on my
hands.

But thank you for the Bugzilla link. It helped direct me to this:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37516

It's for the .doc problem. Looks like they don't consider a big fat warning
to be a blocking bug. Oh well, not like I'm paying for LibreOffice. Can't
complain right?

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#9

Ahh great to see you have a valid doc from 3.3.2 aswell as the wrong one from
3.4.0 at
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37516
That might help the devs pinpoint the problem, hopefully. Imo it's fine to
complain about a Free product especially if you complain to the right people so
that they can fix the problem. It's the only way things are likely to get
noticed and fixed. And anyway it wasn't really a 'complaint' more of a question
about it not working.

It's all good and hopefully that will get fixed but it might take a while
Apols and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

From: At0mic <atomicbutterfly83@gmail.com>
To: users@libreoffice.org
Sent: Sat, 4 June, 2011 16:02:30
Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: LO Writer 3.4.0 --- basic .doc/.odt files not
understood properly by MS Office 2010

BTW, don't take the above personally Tom. Wasn't directly at you personally.
I'm just not a fan of reading rants when I've got a critical issue on my
hands.

But thank you for the Bugzilla link. It helped direct me to this:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37516

It's for the .doc problem. Looks like they don't consider a big fat warning
to be a blocking bug. Oh well, not like I'm paying for LibreOffice. Can't
complain right?

--
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#10

In data 04 giugno 2011 alle ore 17:02:30, At0mic <atomicbutterfly83@gmail.com> ha scritto:

It's for the .doc problem. Looks like they don't consider a big fat warning
to be a blocking bug. Oh well, not like I'm paying for LibreOffice. Can't
complain right?

Please file your complain in bugzilla.

More users do it more attention is attracted from this major, IMO, bug.

Regards,

Gianluca

P.S. I still don't get that stupid warning in my MS Office version! :frowning:

#11

Hi,

[...]

But thank you for the Bugzilla link. It helped direct me to this:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37516

It's for the .doc problem. Looks like they don't consider a big fat warning
to be a blocking bug. Oh well, not like I'm paying for LibreOffice. Can't
complain right?

Bug 37516: 'Importance' is 'highest / major'.
That bug is also mentioned in the 'Release Notes for LibreOffice 3.4.0
Final (2011-06-03)' [1]:

"There are a few issues still contained in this release, which will be
addressed soon with upcoming bug fix releases [2]:
[...]
MS Office 2010 complains about damaged MS Office 2003/XP documents
created by LibreOffice 3.4 (fdo#37516)"
[...]

[1] https://www.libreoffice.org/download/release-notes/#LO340
[2] http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan#3.4_release

mjk

#12

At0mic,

The whole open source/proprietary war is pointless because each side uses
lies and hyperbole to win various arguments. The open source side is not
innocent of using FUD, sorry. Windows 7 is nice, better than most Linux
distros for desktop use in my opinion, and no-one is going to change my mind
by spewing anti-MS comments that do not negate the flaws in the competition.
I dislike Microsoft as much as the next person, but I (currently) despise a
lot about Linux for desktop use as well, hence the use of Windows 7.

Needless to say this doesn't have anything to do with my problem. This
problem I'm having has never happened to me before (at least with
OpenOffice), so I'm wondering what's going on. I can live with a few
comparability issues such as formatting, but if Writer is writing a broken
form of the .doc format when it used to work, I'd like to know what's going
on.

Interestingly enough, the .docx format works perfectly for my little test...

--
View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/LO-Writer-3-4-0-basic-doc-odt-files-not-understood-properly-by-MS-Office-2010-tp3023234p3023315.html
Sent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

No problems with the new MS format, interesting because 3.3.x was very
erratic with properly reading/saving to that format.

#13

I've looked into this.

FOR THE ODT FILES ONLY:

The problem is that Microsoft supports ODF 1.1. The later versions of LO (and OO.o) anticipate ODF 1.2 and by default use ODF 1.2-only features of the manifest in the ODT package. The Microsoft ODF 1.1 implementations do not recognize those features and considers there to be something wrong. If you let Word "attempt to correct" the document it will, and it will be fine. (The only way it would not be fine is if the document was encrypted using something other than the default encryption that exists for ODF 1.1. But Office won't accept any kind of encrypted ODF document, so the ODF 1.2 differences don't matter.)

Then you have the reverse problem. If you save from Word as an ODT and take it back to one of these recent LO (and OO.o) versions, they will sometimes report that the ODF 1.1 that Office produced is corrupt. (This appears to be related to their being some files in the package, such as for images, that are not in the manifest.) If you let the LO (and OO.o) product "attempt to correct" it will and everything should work fine.

The problem is that the corruption message is heavy-handed and there are different ways where the down-level 1.1 and up-level 1.2-ready products are unforgiving, even though it is something that they can fix. Also, if there really is a document corruption, as opposed to one of those correctable matters, we can't tell.

FOR THE DOC FILES:

I have not encountered or explored that.

- Dennis

#14

Good work and interesting :slight_smile: You can change which ODF Format Version
LibreOffice uses by going to the "Tools" menu

Tools - Options - "Load/Save" - General - "ODF Format Version"
and change the drop-down from 1.2 Extended to 1.0/1.1.

Thanks Dennis, regards all from
Tom :slight_smile:

From: Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>
To: users@libreoffice.org
Sent: Sat, 4 June, 2011 21:35:24
Subject: RE: [libreoffice-users] LO Writer 3.4.0 --- basic .doc/.odt files not
understood properly by MS Office 2010

I've looked into this.

FOR THE ODT FILES ONLY:

The problem is that Microsoft supports ODF 1.1. The later versions of LO (and
OO.o) anticipate ODF 1.2 and by default use ODF 1.2-only features of the
manifest in the ODT package. The Microsoft ODF 1.1 implementations do not
recognize those features and considers there to be something wrong. If you let
Word "attempt to correct" the document it will, and it will be fine. (The only
way it would not be fine is if the document was encrypted using something other
than the default encryption that exists for ODF 1.1. But Office won't accept
any kind of encrypted ODF document, so the ODF 1.2 differences don't matter.)

Then you have the reverse problem. If you save from Word as an ODT and take
it back to one of these recent LO (and OO.o) versions, they will sometimes
report that the ODF 1.1 that Office produced is corrupt. (This appears to be
related to their being some files in the package, such as for images, that are
not in the manifest.) If you let the LO (and OO.o) product "attempt to
correct" it will and everything should work fine.

The problem is that the corruption message is heavy-handed and there are
different ways where the down-level 1.1 and up-level 1.2-ready products are
unforgiving, even though it is something that they can fix. Also, if there
really is a document corruption, as opposed to one of those correctable
matters, we can't tell.

FOR THE DOC FILES:

I have not encountered or explored that.

- Dennis

From: At0mic [mailto:atomicbutterfly83@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2011 07:19
To: users@libreoffice.org
Subject: [libreoffice-users] LO Writer 3.4.0 --- basic .doc/.odt files not
understood properly by MS Office 2010

LibreOffice Writer 3.4.0 running under Windows 7 64-bit.

Problem 1 reproduction -
* Start Writer
* Create a document and type in a few words, nothing special or extravagant
* Save as an .odt file
* Load into MS Office 2010

Error message:
The file <filename> cannot be opened because there are problems with the
contents.

Details
The file is corrupt and cannot be opened.

Clicking OK asks if you want to recover the contents of the document. The
recovered document is correct and uncorrupted.

-----

Problem 2 reproduction -
* Start Writer
* Create another document and type in a few words
* Save as a .doc file (97/2000/XP)
* Load into MS Office 2010

Red toolbar message:
Protected view - Office has detected a problem with this file. Editing it may
harm your computer. Click here for details.

It is then possible to click "Edit anyway" and get on with things. The loaded
file is correct and uncorrupted.

---

In the past I've never had problems with basic files working between both word
processors, but something has happened which is causing Office 2010 to dislike
both the .doc and .odt versions of the files LO is saving. This is not a good
thing. I'll refrain from calling it a bug in case there's an option within LO
which can save the files in such a way as to pacify Office 2010. Otherwise I
can't trust it to be usable in a mixed environment.

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#15

OK thanks to all. Looks like the version change works without complaint in
Office 2010. I should also accept mea culpa in not reading the release notes
first, as this would have exposed the problem to me earlier. I am amazed at
how quickly responses came through though, impressive!

Thankyou all.

Nick.

Tom Davies wrote:

#16

That's because you top-post where everybody instinctively looks. Had
you bottom-posted the email would have been ignored.

#17

I'm using Nabble to read this (much prefer forum style - mailing lists don't
appear to have much benefit over forums nowadays), so I don't know any other
way to post.

Nick.

Roland Hughes wrote:

#18

Hi :slight_smile:
Probably best to avoid this argument about top vs bottom posting again!! Some
of the old-boys and vital devs might get upset again! Please, lets try to
minimise such arguments from now on.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

From: At0mic <atomicbutterfly83@gmail.com>
To: users@libreoffice.org
Sent: Sun, 5 June, 2011 2:41:29
Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: LO Writer 3.4.0 --- basic .doc/.odt files not
understood properly by MS Office 2010

I'm using Nabble to read this (much prefer forum style - mailing lists don't
appear to have much benefit over forums nowadays), so I don't know any other
way to post.

Nick.

Roland Hughes wrote:
>
> That's because you top-post where everybody instinctively looks. Had
> you bottom-posted the email would have been ignored.
>
>
>
>> OK thanks to all. Looks like the version change works without complaint
>> in
>> Office 2010. I should also accept mea culpa in not reading the release
>> notes
>> first, as this would have exposed the problem to me earlier. I am amazed
>> at
>> how quickly responses came through though, impressive!
>>
>> Thankyou all.
>>
>> Nick.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Tom Davies wrote:
>> >
>> > Good work and interesting :slight_smile: You can change which ODF Format Version
>> > LibreOffice uses by going to the "Tools" menu
>> >
>> > Tools - Options - "Load/Save" - General - "ODF Format Version"
>> > and change the drop-down from 1.2 Extended to 1.0/1.1.
>> >
>> > Thanks Dennis, regards all from
>> > Tom :slight_smile:
>>
>>
>> --
>> View this message in context:
>>
http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/LO-Writer-3-4-0-basic-doc-odt-files-not-understood-properly-by-MS-Office-2010-tp3023234p3025204.html

>> Sent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>
>
> --
> Roland Hughes, President
> Logikal Solutions
> (630)-205-1593
>
> http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com
> http://www.infiniteexposure.net
>
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#19

Hi :slight_smile:
You are welcome [bows]. It was Dennis' answer that gave the biggest nudge
towards sorting the problem but there is no way of crediting him with points or
anything.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

From: At0mic <atomicbutterfly83@gmail.com>
To: users@libreoffice.org
Sent: Sun, 5 June, 2011 2:11:45
Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: LO Writer 3.4.0 --- basic .doc/.odt files not
understood properly by MS Office 2010

OK thanks to all. Looks like the version change works without complaint in
Office 2010. I should also accept mea culpa in not reading the release notes
first, as this would have exposed the problem to me earlier. I am amazed at
how quickly responses came through though, impressive!

Thankyou all.

Nick.

Tom Davies wrote:
>
> Good work and interesting :slight_smile: You can change which ODF Format Version
> LibreOffice uses by going to the "Tools" menu
>
> Tools - Options - "Load/Save" - General - "ODF Format Version"
> and change the drop-down from 1.2 Extended to 1.0/1.1.
>
> Thanks Dennis, regards all from
> Tom :slight_smile:

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#20

That's because you top-post where everybody instinctively looks.  Had
you bottom-posted the email would have been ignored.

Extremely off topic, please don't read (I guess most people would now
ask me to ”please don't write”…):
That's interesting. How can you top- or bottom post when you write a
new thread? Top of what?

Regards

Johnny Rosenberg
ジョニー・ローゼンバーグ