by RoryOF » Tue May 04, 2010 11:21 pm
It is possible that the files have not in fact been reformatted, simply displayed with new formatting due to being opened with Openoffice. Unless they have been saved afresh, the underlying file is still the same. Such apparent reformatting occurs for two reasons: firstly because on a new computer almost certainly there will not be the exact fonts available used in the original files; OOo tries to do its best, but different fonts have different parameters for character spacing and interline spacing, so the text appears to change position. This usually shows up as lines wrapping differently, and a different number of lines per page, so a different page count in the document. These changes are not transferred back into the original file, unless you save the file from openOffice.
Secondly, because OOo is not Word, some structures, particularly tables, but there are others, are misinterpreted between the one word processor and the other. Again, unless you save the file from OOo these changes are display changes only.
So most probably there is no need to panic, as the original files may well be unchanged and will show up unchanged on a Word installation similar to that on which they were generated.
Last edited by
RoryOF on Wed May 05, 2010 8:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.8 on Xubuntu 20.04.1 (mostly 64 bit version) and very infrequently on Win2K/XP