MS Works import

users
#1

LibreOffice 3.4 is advertised as supporting import of MS Works files,
but a search of the archives of this list shows very little about it. I
have a colleague who has a rather large (66Mb) .wps file with loads of
pictures that he wants to open on his Mac, and I suggested LO as an
easy way.

A quick play with my own LO (3.4.1) on Windows XP was inconclusive. I
found a few sample .wps text documents on the web. Two of them opened
OK, but had no formatting. The third opened as a blank document. A .wdb
spreadsheet that I had been sent in the past also opened as a blank
text document.

How much experience of people had of Works import and does it actually
work, or is it as I seem to be finding rather buggy?

Dave

http://www.davesergeant.com

#2

No problem here using V 3.3.3 running on Ubuntu (that's the latest version for Ubuntu). See samples at www.writersedgeservice.com/filebrowser/proposalsfiction.asp . Formatting was fine.

Charlie.

#3

Be sure you installed the 'Legacy File Format Filters' when you
installed it.

You have to choose the 'Custom' install option to get to these...

#4

Thanks Charlie for that. I have just updated to 3.4.2 to see if that
would change things, but it did not. And yes, I DO have the legacy
filters installed, which you need for the old .sxw etc formats but I
don't think they are needed for Works.

The documents on writersedge were in fact the ones I had found myself.
There are three .wps files on there, and these all open fine, complete
with formatting, bolding etc in MS Word Viewer.

In LO 3.4.2:
cad7593009.wps - opens blank, if I look at the properties pane it
claims it has 1 page with 0 characters.
fot4813409.wps and mot6312910.wps open correctly as plain text but all
the bolding, italics, paragraph indents, and other formatting is
missing. They look totally different from how they do in Wordview.

I wonder if it has changed between v3.3 and v3.4 or maybe it is a
Windows issue?

Dave

http://www.davesergeant.com

#5

...
It's not a Windows issue... I've tested using OOo 3.2.1 (go-oo based),
LO 3.3.3, and LO 3.4.2 - all linux, and get the same results in 3.4.2.
OOo 3.2.1 and LO 3.3.3 opens cad7593009.wps (albeit without detailed
formating). So I reckon that you've found a bug - please file a bug
report using those files as examples.

#6

Hi Dave,

In LO 3.4.2:
cad7593009.wps - opens blank, if I look at the properties pane it
claims it has 1 page with 0 characters.
fot4813409.wps and mot6312910.wps open correctly as plain text but all
the bolding, italics, paragraph indents, and other formatting is
missing. They look totally different from how they do in Wordview.

I can confirm your described display of these files on Mac OSX with
LibreOffice 3.4.2, but as far as I knew, WPS import was never perfect
anyway.

FWIW, in LO 3.3.2, the files display differently, with cad7593009
opening and showing bold and italic formatting. However, the other two
files do not appear to show paragraph indents, bold or italic either in
LO 3.3.2, so I would say that the import feature is less than perfect,
and that something between 3.3.x and 3.4.x now prevents opening of
certain content stored within WPS files. You'd best open a bug report.

Alex

#7

Filed as bug 40032 (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40032)

This is the first Bugzilla bug I have ever composed, please be free to
comment/modify if I have omitted anything.

Dave

http://www.davesergeant.com

#8

Hi :slight_smile:
Looks good to me. It's not too long and gets to the point quickly.

Annoyingly (& not your fault) the url is not clickable but it is better practice
to copy&paste a url into a web-browser for security reasons. Adding an
attachment was smart but it opened fine for me in Ubuntu 10.04 using LibreOffice
3.3.2.

So, the report is far better than most people's. The devs might ask for further
detail when they get time to go through the report, as that is a standard thing
for them to do. It's better than having an excessively long report full of
irrelevant details. Even tho LibreOffice has a ton of devs it could be a few
weeks before they get around to it.

Congrats and nicely done.

Can you install the LibreOffice 3.3.3 alongside your current version of
LibreOffice just to see if that has more success opening the file or are you
already using the 3.3.x branch?

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Installing_in_parallel

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#9

Annoyingly (& not your fault) the url is not clickable but it is better
practice to copy&paste a url into a web-browser for security reasons.
Adding an attachment was smart but it opened fine for me in Ubuntu 10.04
using LibreOffice 3.3.2.

It is clickable in my email copy (Pegasus Mail)...

It is known to work correctly in LO3.3 series and seems to have
appeared in v3.4. Somebody has just commented that it works also in GO-
OO 3.3.

So, the report is far better than most people's. The devs might ask for
further detail when they get time to go through the report, as that is a
standard thing for them to do. It's better than having an excessively
long report full of irrelevant details. Even tho LibreOffice has a ton
of devs it could be a few weeks before they get around to it.

Thanks. Will wait for the response. Looking over some other bug reports
it seems it may take a little while...

Congrats and nicely done.

Can you install the LibreOffice 3.3.3 alongside your current version of
LibreOffice just to see if that has more success opening the file or are
you already using the 3.3.x branch?

Since others have shown it works in v3.3 I will leave it at that.

Dave

http://www.davesergeant.com

#10

Hi :slight_smile:
All good :slight_smile: Sounds like the problem can be pin-pointed to fairly specific
releases, such as the newer ones that a lot of people are using.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#11

This issue appears solved in the latest development issue, v3.5, which I
downloaded last week.

Dave

#12

Hi :slight_smile:
WooHoo, congrats :slight_smile: It's good to ehar you have got it working at last :slight_smile:
Congrats and regards from
Tom :slight_smile: