Opening Microsoft Office 2013 files

users
#1

Hi all,

It's very important for me to fix this weird problem - so bear with me on
the story so far:

A year ago my mom asked me to advise about a 14" laptop. The only one
available at the time, in her price range, had Windows 8.0 pre-installed on
it. She hated it right on the get-go, so it wasn't hard to convince her to
switch to Ubuntu. I wiped the hard drive and installed Ubuntu 14.04 on it.
I used the LibreOffice PPA since version 4.3 and all went well.

My mom uses her laptop to write a book, her memoirs. She uses the Microsoft
Office 2013 format to save her work because, sadly, her editor uses the
dreadful Office Suite...

So, a few days ago she sent her current file to her Editor. The editor
added some comments in the file and sent it back to her. A few seconds
after opening the file, LibreOffice hangs (the window goes dark) and
sometimes the whole Desktop Environment (Unity) froze (!)

Here is what I tried - without success:

   - Upgrading to Libreoffice 5.1 (by adding the new PPA:
   libreoffice/libreoffice-5-1).
   - Removing older LibreOffice versions (ppa-purge).
   - Purging LibreOffice and re-installing it (apt-get purge libreoffice*).
   - Opening the same fie on different computers with different CPUs (her
   desktop computer also runs Ubuntu 14.04 after an automatic upgrade to
   Windows 10 annoyed her too :slight_smile:

As I mentioned, none of these steps worked. It is *very* important for me
to make it work!

   - Any tips?
   - Maybe tweaking some configuration options?
   - Telling her Editor to save the fie in a different format?

I wish I could switch her Editor to LibreOffice too, but I get the feeling
she's not that open minded as my mom. It took her to days to tell me which
version of Microsoft Office she uses...

Thank you for your help,

Amichai.

#2

Hi Amichai

Amichai Rotman wrote

As I mentioned, none of these steps worked. It is *very* important for me
to make it work!

   - Any tips?
   - Maybe tweaking some configuration options?
   - Telling her Editor to save the fie in a different format?

I wish I could switch her Editor to LibreOffice too, but I get the feeling
she's not that open minded as my mom. It took her to days to tell me which
version of Microsoft Office she uses...

Microsoft Office and LibreOffice (or any Open Document based Office) will
never be 100% compatible. It is not in Microsoft's interest that they are
compatible.

That said, you are probably better off using Office 2003 (.doc) format. It
has been around for a longer time (so many problems have been figured out)
and it is no longer changing. On the contrary there is no Office 2013
format. It is just another iteration of the XML version that Microsoft has
been tweaking since Office 2007 making it slightly incompatible even with
the previous MS Office releases so that the user is forced to keep buying
the newest version.

If there are any features in the document that are not compatible with .doc
then your only options (excluding giving in to Microsoft) are to ask the
Editor to install LibreOffice alongside with Microsoft Office or send the
editor the Portable version of LibreOffice (maybe just the link)
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/portable-versions/
and in that case you could stick with ODF files which is definitely your
best option.

The idea is that the Editor will still be using MS Office as default but can
open ODF files.

Hope this helps,
Pedro

#3

hi.
does she make any change in her libreoffice options?
which version of libreoffice does she use before 5.1?
and also its useful to uncheck these two options as i know.
go to tools, options, view, and uncheck Use hardware acceleration and
Use OpenGL for all rendering (on restart).
hope thats help.