Open PDF with OpenOffice 4

[TomSzuba]

I dumped my 7 HP Pavilion after the mother board failed. Bought a MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite, and transferred all my data files to the Mac from the old HP hard drive. I have used open Office for many years, so I have a lot of Open office files. All of my .odp & .pps presentations that I had done on my HP in Open Office run okay on the new Mac. The problem I'm having is the .doc and .txt files run on Mac 'Pages' and Open Office, but .pdf and .wps(Microsoft Word) files will not. What do I use to open the .pdf files, and what can I use to convert .wps files to .doc files or to make them workable as a .wps file.
When I try to run these files I get a pop -up "ASCCI Filter Options" Which means nothing to me.... Help.
Tom

[thomasjk]

No version of Openoffice will open PDF files.You need a PDF editor. For .wps files you can use http://www.zamzar.com to convert them.

[RusselB]

Zamzar will also work with the PDF files

[Bidouille]

No version of Openoffice will open PDF files.You need a PDF editor.

AOO can open PDF with Draw if you install PDF Import before.

[RoryOF]

No version of Openoffice will open PDF files.You need a PDF editor.

AOO can open PDF with Draw if you install PDF Import before.

While this permits making some cosmetic changes to a PDF file using OpenOffice, it is not a satisfactory way of reading a PDF file. One is better to install a dedicated PDF reader; Adobe Reader is the most common, but there are others, both commercial and shareware.

[TomSzuba]

Thank you all for your help.
Tom

[swimboy]

I test-drove a couple of products from Wondershare which purported to convert PDF files to "most popular formats". However, the .docx files did not successfully import into OO4.1.1 When challenged, their tech support were helpful at first, then fell back on the statement that the Wondershare products were written for Microsoft Word, and there was a compatibility issue with Open Office.

[RoryOF]

You can use an OCR application which will attempt to break the PDF file back into editable text, suitable for MS Word or OO Writer. Such deconstruction is rarely completely successful; one has to be prepared to edit the OCR output to bring it to a state that pleases you.

[RusselB]

On behalf of the users that read your post, swimboy, thanks for the advise.
I would, in future, check the actual formats that they use to ensure that the Open Document Format (.ods for spreadsheets, .odt for Writer, .odb for Base, etc.) are specifically listed.
If you have .docx files, you might find that they work better with LibreOffice,

[Ron T]

I have a question similar to Tom's. I am using OpenOffice (4.0) with Mac's "Mavericks" OS and it's working fine. I would like to move to using Apple's new "Yosemite" OS, but wonder if I will encounter conflicts between OpenOffice and Yosemite.

I see that Tom mentions problems with .doc and .txt files, but he's made a bigger jump in operating systems and computers.

Anyone experience problems with Yosemite and OpenOffice?

Ron

[swimboy]

Replying to Ron T. I've been using Open Office 4.1.1 quite successfully with Yosemite 10.10.3. I am not a 'heavy' user of OO, however, so my testing is quite superficial. My main use is a spreadsheet with some graphs, and some word processing. I have never experienced anything like a crash or a conflict. Just my 2 penn'orth.

[lgusaas]

I have a question similar to Tom's. I am using OpenOffice (4.0) with Mac's "Mavericks" OS and it's working fine. I would like to move to using Apple's new "Yosemite" OS, but wonder if I will encounter conflicts between OpenOffice and Yosemite.

I see that Tom mentions problems with .doc and .txt files, but he's made a bigger jump in operating systems and computers.

Anyone experience problems with Yosemite and OpenOffice?

Ron

I've had no problems using Apache OpenOffice with Yosemite. I upgraded to Yosemite five months ago.