Re: [libreoffice-users] Problem reading Word 2003 document

Wow, what a lot of great responses.  Thanks, all.

To answer a number of questions:

I was using an older version of LO (I just got notified when I brought 
it up this month that a new version was available).  Both versions could 
not open the .doc file.  The 3.5 version I am using now was updated this 
last weekend (3.5.7.2).

Word 2003 and LO are running on the same machine, running Windows 7.

I didn't consider writing it as RTF and reading it into LO.  I'll try 
that next time.

I'm guessing the LibreOffice folder is the one under 
"C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice.

It was suggested I post the file to Nobble.  I'm willing to do that, but 
I don't know what that is.  Google doesn't provide anything useful.

I will definitely look into the Bullzip PDF printer (I've downloaded 
it).  I have a PDF printer somewhere (when I bought OmniPage 18), but I 
can't seem to find the CD.  My biggest goal in bringing up this issue 
was to help the LO developers fix a problem.  I was ultimately able to 
send the .doc file to my work computer and generate PDF there.

Just so you know, I'm not a huge fan of .PDF.  The only reason I have to 
provide .PDF is because the company we use to print the newsletter 
requires it.  Apparently, the .PDF format is a lot smaller, too, so it 
is what the American Legion suggests.  We send the newsletter to about 
250 people each month.

I tried the "Open and Repair" option (that was new to me).  It came up 
with a bunch of errors for all the images that were in the document.  I 
then saved the file, but it made no difference.  It still doesn't 
recognize it as a Word document.

I tried "Save as..." with a different name.  It was said that this would 
do a garbage collection.  New name has the same problem.  It's not 
recognized as a Word document.

Odt files: Okay, I had a bad experience with OpenOffice.  When I 
contacted the e-mail support group, they said I shouldn't save files on 
a flash drive.  Then someone told me how to unpack the .odt file and fix 
it with an editor.  Okay, that's the last time I wanted to trust the 
.odt format.  I've heard that LibreOffice is much better maintained, but 
I hadn't trusted the .odt format.  I usually save .doc, .rtf or .html 
formats.  I've never had a problem with them. Maybe I should give the 
.odt format a try again.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions.  I've got some work to do to 
try some of these things.
Chris



On 11/28/2012 8:48 AM, Steve Edmonds wrote:
> On 2012-11-28 19:14, Chris Carlson wrote:
> > I'm new to this e-mail list, so excuse me if this is something 
> > discussed already.
> >
> > I've been very pleased with LibreOffice on many fronts.  I recommend 
> > it to everyone.  As a matter of fact, I use it instead of Word at 
> > every opportunity.  At work, though, I use Word because that's what's 
> > installed.
> >
> > I write a newsletter for the American Legion.  Since it was developed 
> > in Word, I use my old student copy of Word 2003 to create it each 
> > month.  I have to provide both a .doc and .pdf of the newsletter to 
> > the printers.  My trick, since Word 2003 doesn't offer a .pdf output, 
> > is to read the .doc with LibreOffice (3.5) and publish it to .pdf.
> >
> > For the first time in months, LibreOffice can't seem to recognize the 
> > .doc format.  I'm using the same version of Word that I've used for 
> > months.  The newsletter is basically the same file, which I copy and 
> > modify for the new month.  For whatever reason, LibreOffice tries to 
> > open it as a text file.  It initially asks what text encoding it 
> > should use, waits for a long time, and then opens a garbage document.
> >
> > Is this a known problem?  Did I do something to the document that 
> > caused it to be read incorrectly?
> >
> > Thanks for any ideas on this.
> >
> > Chris
> Hi.
> Did you update your version of LO. Possibly this is related to the 
> thread with subject  MS Office MacIntosh to Libre Writer Windows. 
> There was a bug filed 
> (<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53909>) and seems to 
> apply to LO > 3.5.4 and LO < 3.6.4.
> Steve


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