From MS Word Documents to OpenOffice

[zorahpoet]

Hello All,

I believe this question has already been answered but the responses are too technical and complicated for me.
A few minutes ago, I successfully downloaded and opened OF 4.1.5 on my 2009 iMac (OS 10.10.?). (Very proud of me!)
Now, I want to know, please, if I can open Microsoft Word documents with Open Office. That is, I want Open Office to be my main or only application but I am a writer (and teacher) and before I cancel this . . . account (don't want and can't really afford that yearly fee!), I need to know.
I will try an experiment (export, if possible) and keep researching.

Also, I downloaded this app several years ago but never really used it. Whether it works for me or not, I am *totally* grateful to and for all of you who have developed it, and made it free. Thank you so much.

- zorahpoet

[RoryOF]

use /File /Open and point to the MS Word files. It is best to later Save As and select .odt format and work in that format

[robleyd]

As a newcomer to Apache OpenOffice (not OpenForum!) on Macintosh you may find [Tutorial] Mac FAQ a useful resource; if you want to set OpenOffice to be the default program to open MS Office documents, see Q33/A33 in that tutorial.

[John_Ha]

See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in and save files as .odt.