RE: [libreoffice-users] Do You Share ODF Documents With MS Office Users?

I don't qualify for your use case.  I use both ODF and OOXML and I use LibreOffice, Microsoft 
Office, and Apache OpenOffice (as well as some old OpenOffice.org versions).  But my purpose is 
exploring interoperability available via the standardized formats.

However, I can explain some of what you are experiencing.

Sometime in 2011, maybe earlier, some of the ODF-based applications started producing ODF 1.2 
packages by default.  Those use features not defined in ODF 1.1.  Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 
support ODF 1.1 (ODF 1.2 not being approved as an OASIS Standard until later).  

 1. Going to Office 2007/2010 with ODS: Microsoft Office is strict about what it supports and the 
unexpected ODF 1.2 features lead Microsoft Office to report that the document appears to be 
corrupted.  If you use the option to attempt to repair the document, it will usually be repaired 
correctly because in practice the differences in the package of an ODF 1.2 document can be safely 
ignored.  (That is not always true all of the time, but it should be for simple cses.)

 2. Going from Office 2007/2010 to ODS: There will be a warning about potential feature loss.  I 
don't think there is a way out of it.  Doesn't LibreOffice do the same thing if you choose to 
export an XLS or XLSX file?  In the Microsoft Office 2007/2010 case, this is a serious warning.  
For a simple document, there may be no problem but I don't think any of the implementations check 
to see if there is actually some feature that won't carry over properly.

 3. In addition, there *is* a serious incompatibility between Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 ODS files 
and ODS files from any OpenOffice-heritage application.  The formulas carried in the ODS are not 
compatible.  

This situation appears to be changing for Microsoft Office 2013.  The preview supports the same 
formulas in Excel-supported ODS files as do the OpenOffice-heritage applications that now support 
ODF 1.2.  (ODF had no specification for spreadsheet formulas until ODF 1.2.)  

You can test this improved fidelity, if you like, by using SkyDrive preview to see how much better 
your ODS files can be used by that implementation of Excel.  There are still some warnings but not 
the corruption case in anything I've seen so far.  You can find out about the new Web Apps preview 
at
  <http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-updated-office-web-apps-whats-new-7000001314/>
  <https://skydrive.live.com/?officebeta=1>

You'll need a Windows Live ID if you haven't one already.

 - Dennis

I have a little more about this at 
<http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-ooo-dev/201207.mbox/%3c002d01cd66bd$d44e3640$7ceaa2c0$@acm.org%3e>

-----Original Message-----
From: Don Parris [mailto:parrisdc@gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2012 18:04
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: [libreoffice-users] Do You Share ODF Documents With MS Office Users?

I would like to take something of a straw poll, if that's ok.  I simply
want to know whether any of you have shared documents using the ODF format
with MS Office users (preferably in a business environment), and what was
the reaction?  What problems

I am not seeking advice on how to share documents with MS Office users.
 Nor am I interested in an in-depth analysis of why one might experience
problems in sharing such documents.  I simply want to know your experience.

I have been sharing a simple spreadsheet document between LO (at home) and
MSO (at work) in the OD format.  The experience has been interesting on the
MS Office side of it.  I get error messages (that don't seem to be real
errors), and if I choose the "repair" option, it claims to fix the errors,
and even gives me a link to click to see the list of alleged corrections.
 The list is just a near-empty XML document.  And to save a document in ODF
raises a warning *every single time*, with no opportunity to say "stop
warning me".

I know most of us still have to deal with both suites.  I just wonder if
anyone else (how many???) has experienced similar issues.

Thanks,
Don
-- 
D.C. Parris, FMP, Linux+, ESL Certificate
Minister, Security/FM Coordinator, Free Software Advocate
http://dcparris.net/
<https://www.xing.com/profile/Don_Parris><http://www.linkedin.com/in/dcparris>
GPG Key ID: F5E179BE

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