[libreoffice-users] Re: From MS Word to Writer: keeping my styles, macros, toolbars from Normal.dot

Hello all, and thank you for welcoming me here.

First, I'd like to address the remarks of the few people who told me that I
should not "fill any fuel into [my new car] even if [it] looks very similar
like the old one".

I am not starting my document-creating life from scratch today. I created
lots of content over many years, and would like to keep using that content.
There are thousands (millions?) of users like me: should all the people who
used Word before OOo and LibO even existed lose the tools they've spent
years perfecting?

I think my migration questions are perfectly valid. And I'll go further: I
think an official answer (read: documentation) should be available to all
of LibO's users. Because no, not many people are born into using LibO: most
are, instead, migrating from another office suite. If you want them to
adopt this new software, you must help them doing so!

---

Now, for what I did so far (questions in green):

I opened my Normal.dot template with Writer, saved it as MyTemplate.ott.
Then Files>Templates>Organize, selected it and made it the default template
(that's exactly what Tom and Andreas recommended. Thanks!)

The results:

*Styles*: every new document allows me to use my former styles. All of them
were imported, except for the few character styles I had: Word
distinguishes between paragraph styles and character styles, and it looks
like it won't let me convert a character style into a paragraph style. I'll
have to re-create those in LibO (I'll make sure to read the two chapters
dedicated to styles in
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/images/7/73/WG3400-WriterGuideLO.pdf).

*Buttons*: LibO didn't import any of the buttons which referred to MS Word
commands, which... makes sense, of course.
I also had many buttons calling my macros, and it did not import all of
them; I think it only imported the ones I had created, and not the
predefined Word buttons... Although I'm not entirely sure.
I'll need more custom buttons. It's nice to be able to import image files,
but is there any way I could import several at once?

*Toolbars*: in Word, I had 5 custom toolbars displayed out of 14. Well,
LibO imported 4 toolbars, including one that wasn't displayed in Word and
that I didn't really care about... No idea how it chose them.
In Word, I had also placed buttons on the menu bar. It imported them, but
won't let me remove them through its own interface now! ^^

*Shortcuts*: I suppose it makes perfect sense that I have to re-create
those. That's alright. :)

*AutoText* and *AutoCorrect* entries: I gave a method to import those in my
last email... But on second thought, I won't. Instead, I will use a
system-wide text expander such as Breevy or PhraseExpress, that will work
in all my applications.

*Custom dictionaries*: it looks like you can paste content directly in
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\3\user\wordbook\DictYouJustCreated.dic,
as long as you have one entry per line. No need for a macro!

*Macros*, mine, the ones I actually need: I tried running several of them,
and none seemed to work. It returns error messages from the first line of
code every time... I must have forgotten something! In the Options, on the
Load/Save / VBA Properties page, all the boxes are checked (can't remember
if I did that or if that was the default). Is there any way to make that
work any better?
If I need to re-write / re-record everything, chapter 13 of
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/images/3/33/GS35-GettingStartedLO.pdfseems
like a good place to start. And it provides links to other resources
as well.
I also found an MS Word macro to print a list of all my existing
macros<http://word.tips.net/T007423_Printing_a_Macro_List.html>.
That'll be useful to check them one by one as I re-create them! ^^

---

If you have ideas, comments, answers to my questions... please don't
hesitate!

Thanks,

Kyla



2012/10/11 Kyla Robertson <robertsonkyla@gmail.com>:
> Hello,
>
> I'm migrating from MS Word (Office 2002 !) to LibO Writer. In Word, my
> Normal.dot template contains many, many things: about 150 styles, 250
> macros, some auto-insert texts, some custom shortcuts, many toolbars
> and custom buttons.
>
> How can I keep this all to use it with Writer?
>
> In "Migration Guide: A guide to ease your migration to OpenOffice.org
> from other office [suites] (2004)"
> (
http://www.openoffice.org/documentation/manuals/oooauthors/MigrationGuide.pdf
),
> I found a few things:
>  * AutoText entries: will the built-in method to import them still
> work with LibO 3.6.2?(should I get version 3.6.2 or 3.5.6, btw? I'm
> not sure I understand the difference.)
>  * AutoCorrect entries: there's a work-around with a macro and the
> editing of a ./user/autocorr/acorrXXXX.dat file...
>  * Custom dictionaries: there was a work-around to import their
> content, but the link to download the macro isn't valid anymore.
>
> Do you know of a more recent migration guide, or a tutorial on the
> Web, or forum post maybe? I couldn't find anything else.
>
> Thanks in advance for your help!

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