I have OpenOffice 3, on Vista, for my sins. I dont have Microsoft Office on this computer.
I made a brand new multi-foil presentation through IMPRESS [of course, this has taken a huge amount of effort and time] and this now seems to be corrupted.
I religiously did alternate <Save-As>'s at various stages of development [alternating as .odp's and as .ppt's, so I would end up with two identical copies] though, sadly, to the same name each time, so only have the final version. [I had intended to copy the finished presentation to a USB stick so that I could use it on a computer with Powerpoint]
I did not have the auto-backup option enabled (though I have since learned about this and I do now !) and the backup folder is empty (no .bak's anywhere else that I can find either).
Now that I have come back to reopen the presentation on the original computer, both the .ppt version and the .odp version try to open up as WRITER documents when clicked. Prior to display (which is all # characters, and useless) I am presented with an "ASCII Filter Options" dialog box which gives list boxes for <Character set> <Default fonts> and <Language>, and radio buttons for <Paragraph break>. If I <OK> this, both files open up in WRITER, not IMPRESS [even if I start in IMPRESS and go <File> <Recent Documents> <Open>], displaying 4 pages of lines just full of "##########"s.
I notice that, in the same folder, there is a ".~lock.<myfilename>.ppt#" file, which I wonder whether indicates a crash ?
Other, pre-existing, Powerpoint files (which have been created on other computers using Powerpoint) open correctly in IMPRESS, so it seems to be some issue about creating and saving in IMPRESS [??]
Can anyone advise how I can [hopefully] recover and retrieve my work ? Many thanks !