[Solved] OO duplicated my Word Docs. Can I remove the copies

[Hagar Delest]

I just installed Open Office 4.1.1 and went through the conversion wizard, thinking I was converting my Word documents to OpenOffice documents. What happened is that OpenOffice has now duplicated all my Word docs (13,000) and placed the copies in the same folder, so I have 2 versions of each file, both with the same content, sitting next to each other. After looking into this, maybe what I should have done was set up OpenOffice differently, but the problem now is that I have 13,000 duplicated files that I don't need or want. Is there a way I can delete or remove all these new Open Office files that were created by the wizard. I have the log files that recorded the changes. Since I didn't have any Open Office files on my computer when I started, I could delete all of them (by referencing the extension??) and start over, if I knew how to do that. Removing 13,000 files manually is not something I'm looking forward to. Any help would be appreciated. Tom

[Greengiant224]

When selecting the file/s to convert you have the choice to select a different destination folder.
Did you not do that?

Before removing the extraneous files make a backup of the folder in case something disastrously goes wrong.
Possibly using a batch file to remove the files not needed from that particular folder or it
looks like manually removing 13,000 files. Phew.....

Hope this helps.

Greengiant224

[Villeroy]

This could be a typical Windows problem where file name extensions are hidden by default. How can a desktop system rely that much on file name extensions and hide them away from the user? WIth hidden extensions you see 2 icons with the same name which are not the same.

[RoryOF]

The file creation dates should differ. Perhaps there is a way of marking only the files with today's date (or date of conversion) and moving them to a separate directory and then deleting them.
There is info here that may be helpful
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8488363/batch-file-to-move-files-by-date-modified

[Villeroy]

Open some folder and call Tools>Folder Options, tab "View" and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types". Windows will still hide certain types (e.g. .lnk) but at least it is usable now.

[RusselB]

There is a 2 step process using DOS commands to do this.
Step 1: Use the ATTRIB command to change the attributes of the files you want to delete so that they are custom (eg: make them all read only)
Step 2: Use the DEL or ERASE command with the /a switch specifying the custom attribute.

If you aren't familiar with DOS commands, read the help for each of these before using them. The help for each can be gotten by following the command with /?
Thus the help for ATTRIB is gotten by entering ATTRIB /?

To gain access to the DOS commands, click the Start menu and enter CMD where it says "Search programs and files"

[Bill]

Make backup copies of all your files before proceeding. Unhide the file name extensions, then in the Windows Explorer Search box, search for *.xxx where .xxx is the file name extension of the files you want to delete. For example, if .doc files have been converted to .odt files, you would want to delete the .doc files, so you would search for *.doc. You can then select all of the found files and delete them.

[toaf]

Thanks, everybody. On Monday when I get back to work I'll start trying out these suggestions. I figure if I can get rid of all the duplicated files first, then I can uninstall OpenOffice, then reinstall it once I know what I'm doing. Tom

[toaf]

Make backup copies of all your files before proceeding. Unhide the file name extensions, then in the Windows Explorer Search box, search for *.xxx where .xxx is the file name extension of the files you want to delete. For example, if .doc files have been converted to .odt files, you would want to delete the .doc files, so you would search for *.doc. You can then select all of the found files and delete them.

This worked, and many thanks, but I decided to delete all the new *.odt files instead of the old *.doc files. Now I'm back to where I was before I installed OpenOfice. That's where I want to be, and now I can try to get it configured so that it opens Word docs instead of duplicating them. Happily, Tom

[JamesEJ]

Just hopefully a helpful note. Came here looking for an answer to a similar "copy" problem. But I wound up doing a search in the top right small window of the complete listing of all Oo writer documents. the search was "copy". all the docs that were a copy showed up and I proceeded to delete the whole bunch with one click (or 2). Pretty simple, actually. Jim