Files with extension .bak in the profile's backup folder

[thomasr]

Since some time my backups for no explainable reason are saved in C:/users/appdata/roaming/libreoffice/4/backup with the extension .bak, but as PDF instead as documents, and they can't be opened with Acrobat Reader. Can anyone explain what happened to change the saving process and what I can do to save my backups as documents again.

Edit: Changed subject, was Backups  Make your post understandable by others  -- MrProgrammer, forum moderator

[Hagar Delest]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

I guess that it is a mere file association issue. If you right click such file and open with OpenOffice, then it should be fine.
Or make a copy of the file and change its extension to .odt. In fact, such files remain ODF (it doesn't work if you change the extension of a PDF file from .pdf to something else).

Please add [Solved] at the beginning of the title in your first post (top of the topic) with the 🖉 button if your issue has been fixed.

[thomasr]

Thank you very much for your fast answer. In fact: I could open a file in the backup folder by changing the extension to .odt. Now I still have 2 questions: Do I have to change the extension for every single of the more than 900 files in the folder? And even more important: Up to now I used to save my files with Word 97-2003 (*.doc). Do I have to use ODF-Textdokument (*.odt) instead, and will everyone be able to open sent files as it was possible with .doc-files? Is there no way to make Libre Office save .doc-files as .bak-documents (instead of PDFs) as it did until recently?

[LastUnicorn]

You should always be saving your documents as .odt type. If you want a Microsoft .doc/.docx file only save a copy of your .odt file as .doc/docx as a very last step before you (I assume) want to pass the document to some other users that insist on getting Microsoft .doc/.docx files. For more information on this see [Tutorial] Differences between Microsoft and AOO/LO files

For easily opening your .bak files just create a link/shortcut to LibreOffice in your SendTo folder in your boot partition. In this way you can right-click on a .bak file, from the drop-down menu select Send To and then use the shortcut you created to send the document to LibreOffice.

As far as I am aware the most recent versions of Microsoft Office have the capacity to open .odt files but, as always, there might be issues with that — it depends how Microsoft have implemented the load .odt functions.

[thomasr]

Thank you very much. I have now changed the saving of my documents. Obviously I was badly informed. I am afraid I don't quite understand the following paragraph:

For easily opening your .bak files just create a link/shortcut to LibreOffice in your SendTo folder in your boot partition. In this way you can right-click on a .bak file, from the drop-down menu select Send To and then use the shortcut you created to send the document to LibreOffice.

How do I find the SendTo folder in my boot partition, and how do I enter this partition? As you can see I am quite ignorant in computer technics.

[LastUnicorn]

How do I find the SendTo folder in my boot partition, and how do I enter this partition? As you can see I am quite ignorant in computer technics.

What Operating System are using: Windows 7, Windows 10, Windows 11? Ideally you should have that information in your Signature for this forum.

[thomasr]

Windows 10. And what do you mean with Signature for this forum? My name?

[LastUnicorn]

To update your signature look to the very top right-hand side of the forum window. There you will see an icon and your name thomasr displayed with a drop-down arrow to the side. Click on the arrow and select User Control Panel. Once in the panel click on the Profile tab there you will see the option to Edit Signature, click on that and then add your signature details. So far your signature only contains the information Libre Office 7.4.6.2 — which you must have added after joining the forum. Now add in your Operating System (and any other information you want to give).

I will deal with the SendTo topic shortly, I'm a bit busy just now so please be patient.

[Bill]

How do I find the SendTo folder in my boot partition, and how do I enter this partition?

Try a Google search. That usually finds instructions for using your operating system features. I don't use Windows.

[LastUnicorn]

To deal with SendTo:

Go here and read the Guide which explains what SendTo is and how to access the SendTo folder for your User Account (which is on your boot partition). When reading the Guide you will want to focus on OPTION ONE: How to Add or Remove Items in Send To context menu

Right the aim now is create in the SendTo folder a shortcut/link to LibreOffice. To do that do the following:

1. Following the Guide above open an Explorer window to the SendTo folder.
2. In an separate Explorer window drill to the folder that contains your LibreOffice program files. In a default install of LibreOffice this will be in the path C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program
3. In that folder look for the file titled soffice.exe
4. Press down and hold the Alt key on your keyboard, now click and hold on that soffice.exe file then drag it into the SendTo folder. This will create a link/shortcut to LibreOffice in your SendTo folder. (Warning: be absolutely certain that you have created a link/shortcut. Do not move the soffice.exe file itself into the SendTo folder — if you make that mistake move the soffice.exe back to its original location. And try making a shortcut/link again.)
5. Now that you have the link/shortcut created you can change its name to something a bit friendlier than soffice.exe. I usually name it LIBREOFFICE — which makes it stand out and easier to see.
6. Right! That is it set up now. So go into your LibreOffice files backup folder, right-click on a .bak file and from the context menu that appears go (context menu) Send to → LIBREOFFICE. Note that when you send a .bak file to LibreOffice, LibreOffice will select the appropriate component of LibreOffice to handle the file type you have sent e.g. .odt, .ods Etc. It is also worth noting that you can select multiple .bak files and send them all to LibreOffice in one go — just experiment and you see how it works. It is also the case that you can, for example send a .doc or .docx file to LibreOffice by using the SendTo method that you have just set up.
   
   —————————————————————
   
   Switching topic now: You might find the following extension for LibreOffice of use to you: TimeStampBackup Download (Download from this location as it has the latest version.)
   
   For some information on TimeStampBack see this page: Timestamp Backup (Don't download from here as it has only older versions.)
   
   Hope all of the above helps.

[Hagar Delest]

Honestly, you should not lose energy about opening .bak files. Because they are just that: backup files that ought not to be opened unless there has been a problem with the original file in the first place. Note that you could have other applications that use the .bak extension for their own backups too. Thus, associating that extension to AOO may be not be optimal.

It's still not clear what was the actual problem: was the extension set in Windows to be opened with a PDF reader?
Again, you don't need to open those files.

[LastUnicorn]

Note that you could have other applications that use the .bak extension for their own backups too. Thus, associating that extension to AOO may be not be optimal.

Hagar, using the method I have described does not create an association with LibreOffice for opening .bak files — it actually avoids doing so, so there is no complication for other programs that create .bak files. I would never recommend creating a file association for .bak files to LibreOffice/OpenOffice.

[John_Ha]

Edit: Edited to correct and clarify.

.
1. Just click on a Start AOO/LO > File > Open > navigate to the .bak file ..., and AOO/LO will open it.

2. If not, rename fred.bak to fred.odt and it will open as normal. It doesn't matter if the .bak file was a .ods for example - it will still open properly even if renamed to a .odt file.

[LastUnicorn]

The OP is using LibreOffice.

On my own system with LibreOffice installed if I click on a .bak file then I get a Windows dialogue asking what to open the file with. I could from within that dialogue select to have LibreOffice open the file but that's multiple clicks and more effort than it is worth, with the complication that if you do set it to be opened by LibreOffice and set that as the default action then you run into the issue that Hagar mentioned of having other programs create .bak files and, now, they too are to be opened by LibreOffice because of the default setting you have made. I find it much simpler to just have LibreOffice as a SendTo shortcut/link, it's quick and easy to use. It is, I find, quicker than renaming the .bak file to .odt.

As a side note I think the naming scheme that LibreOffice uses for .bak files isn't very helpful. Suppose you have .ods and .odt backed-up as .bak files then you can't tell just from looking at the .bak file name what are backups of .odt and what are backups of .ods files. The naming scheme for backups would be much better in the form (for example) WhateverFileName.ods.bak and WhateverFileName.odt.bak i.e. just append .bak to whatever the full name including the extension of the original file is anyway — doing this would eliminate some potential confusion for users. There is another advantage to using this naming scheme:

Suppose a user has two documents Balance Sheet.odt and Balance Sheet.ods. And the user modifies them at different points in time. What happens with the backups? Well, there will only be one backup (Balance Sheet.bak) file and it will be whichever of those two documents was last modified and saved — the save overwrites the previous .bak file (and in doing so changes the file-type too, if you see what I mean). That's a problem with the current naming scheme for backups. The naming scheme I would like to see gets around this potential issue. (Maybe I should make a feature request at Bugzilla.)

[LastUnicorn]

The issue regarding the naming scheme for .bak files has already been raised at Bugzilla. For anyone that is interested see here: Bug 143038 - TIP: KEEP ORIGINAL EXTENSION NAME IN .BAK FILES

[Hagar Delest]

Hagar, using the method I have described does not create an association with LibreOffice for opening .bak files

Agreed, but it implies a user action to add an entry to the context menu. For something that should never be used (or so rarely).

[thomasr]

Thank you all for your advises. I'm afraid they don't help me with my main problem though. I am able to open a PDF-file in my backup folder. What troubles me: How do I get Libre Office to save my backup files as .bak documents as it did until recently instead of PDFs? I have no idea what changed the saving procedure.

[John_Ha]

How do I get Libre Office to save my backup files as .bak documents ... instead of PDFs?

LO does not save backup files as .pdf. Do the following test.

1. Create and save a new file called fred.odt.
2. Open fred.odt.
3. Check the backup folder - you will see fred.bak and not fred.pdf. My backup folder is C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\backup. If fred.bak has a PDF icon you need to reset the default application for .bak files to LO as suggested earlier.

LO only creates a backup file for a file already saved to disk.

[robleyd]

It may be that thomasr needs to tell Windows file manager to display file extensions to see the actual extension.

Two bob says Windows is playing silly buggers with file associations.

[John_Ha]

Hiding file extensions was yet another of Microsnot's monumentally stupid ideas. It is the first thing I change when working on a different computer.

How do I show file extensions in Windows 10?

Since some time my backups for no explainable reason are saved in C:/users/appdata/roaming/libreoffice/4/backup with the extension .bak, but as PDF instead as documents [with PDF icons] and they can't be opened with Acrobat Reader.

This means the extension is correct but the icon is wrong. Change the icon as described earlier.

Why has the icon changed? Because ****ing Microsnot changes things like this during updates without telling users. If Microsnot hadn't hidden file extensions it would be obvious. Remember the haiku:

Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that.

[thomasr]

Thank you all. It is obvious to me now: the extension is correct, but the icon is wrong. That is why I couldn't open the files with Acrobat Reader. I still didn't find out how to change the icons back. Now that I know the facts though, I can interpret the wrong icons and treat the files as though there was no icon there at all.

[thomasr]

By the way: if I change from saving files as .doc files to .odt files, I can't add the category feature which I need to find certain files. So I prefer to save my files in Word 97-2003. Worked fine until now.

[Hagar Delest]

It's not clear what is the wrong icon, the correct extension.
But well, see [Tutorial] Setting the default program to open files, it should help.

Windows should be ble to search your .odt files. The .doc format is deprecated now. Any crash with such file format will lead to data loss for sure.

Please add [Solved] at the beginning of the title in your first post (top of the topic) with the 🖉 button if your issue has been fixed.

[thomasr]

I'm afraid I didn't make myself clear. After having saved an .doc file I can open a detail window and add a category. I can then search for all files of that category in a folder. As far as I see there is no such detail window for .odt files.

[Villeroy]

Even if that feature is not available for ODF files (I think it is), the disadvantages of not saving a file in your application's native file format weigh much more.

[LastUnicorn]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'category'. However, try creating a new file in LibreOffice then go (menu) File → Properties... → Description (tab) and you have the opportunity there to enter details for the file. The 'Title' box will by default have the title of the template used to create the document, but you can change and enter any title you wish to suit yourself. Always working in .doc files can cause problems down the line and so is best avoided.

In any case, try entering details to suit yourself then save the file in .odt format and close the Writer window. Now test and see if your Windows search function can find, 'Subject', 'Keywords', etc. that you put in the file properties. Try this and it might work and would free you to getting into the habit of always saving your documents in LibreOffice's own file formats.

P.S. I can't test this myself as I have a paranoid mistrust of Microsoft and hence have Microsoft searching and indexing files completely disabled — and I would never enable it for anything.

[Villeroy]

I think, he refers to something like menu:File>Properties>User defined properties in LibreOffice.
When file Windows indexing is turned on, you can search documents by properties.
I'm not so sure if this works with ODF documents or not. Of course, it works with all Microsoft file formats out of the box (if indexing is on).

[John_Ha]

See [Tutorial] Differences between Microsoft and AOO/LO files for a description of differences and for why you should always work in, and save Writer files as .odt, Calc files as .ods, Impress files as .odp, etc.

[thomasr]

"When file Windows indexing is turned on, you can search documents by properties.
I'm not so sure if this works with ODF documents or not." That is exactly the problem. It (the detail window) does not work with ODF documents, and I am unable to find an equivalent for them.

[robleyd]

See if viewtopic.php?f=15&t=102766#p497140 is helpful.