Problem opening certain Word documents

[RHildebrand]

I have a strange problem opening certain documents created in MS Word. I've narrowed it down to the following document and seems to be a combination of an image in a table and some text above it.

ErrorDoc.doc

(53.5 KiB) Downloaded 309 times

MS Word opens the file without any problem, OO 2.3.1 hangs while opening the document which leaves me to eventually kill the process. I've already tried changing certain settings in the option menu but nothing seems to be working. Does anybody have a clue what is wrong here?

Thanks!

[r4zoli]

I tried to open in 2.3.0 same problem, but opens in 2.4 m6 development version.
As I found the picture inserted into a table, this could cause some transformation problem.
When I open in hexa editor, I found you saved as word97 .doc, try to save another MSO format.
I didn't find anything other to cause this, may be some more problems in .doc filter.

[Bill]

Writer doesn't seem to like the vertical position of the image as set in Word. Opening the document in Word 2000, I found that the image's vertical position was set at -1.59" below line. Changing the vertical position from -1.59" to -1.5" in Word allowed the document to open in OOo 2.3.1. What's really strange is that changing the vertical position from -1.59" to 3" in Word also allowed the document to open in OOo 2.3.1.

[Hagar Delest]

No problem on my Ubuntu box with OOo 2.3.1 (official version).

[foxcole]

When I open in hexa editor, I found you saved as word97 .doc, try to save another MSO format.
I didn't find anything other to cause this, may be some more problems in .doc filter.

Actually that is the .doc format one should always use, as it's the most stable even between different Word versions.

I had the same problem as RHildebrand when trying to open the file with 2.3.1. I could open it in a 2.4 snapshot, though it wasn't perfect:

ErrDoc_in_OOo_2-4.gif (9.07 KiB) Viewed 5331 times

Can anyone tell me if there's a way to know exactly which snapshot I'm using? I seem to remember a 5 in the filename but I can't locate any information to verify that. I've looked in Help>About and in the Readme file in the application folder; it's not on the application name either. (I wish the window title would show the build number. That's how our company does it, so it's very easy for users to check the version at a glance.)

[Hagar Delest]

Can anyone tell me if there's a way to know exactly which snapshot I'm using?

From the wiki page:

Find out which OOo version you are using

Open up the About dialog (last entry in the help menu), and hold down the <Ctrl> key, while pressing S D T in a row. The very first line that starts scrolling in (directly below the OK button) gives the internal milestone number, plus the build ID.

NB: got exactly the same display as yours (but no problem to open it).

[foxcole]

Thanks, Hagar!

[RHildebrand]

Thank you all for your replies.

Hopefully OO 2.4 resolve this problem, does anyone know when the release date will be?

[r4zoli]

according to OOo wiki, March 4:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OOoRelease24

[RHildebrand]

Thnx!