Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Welcome beginner. Please answer all of the questions below which may provide information necessary to answer your question.
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Which version of OpenOffice.org are you using? Version 2.3
What Operating System (version) are you using? Windows XP home
What is your question or comment? Is there a way to open my old Lotus freelance files with extension .pre and .ppt in OpenOffice ? I have lost my old Lotus program.

.ppt is a Powerpoint extension. Yes, you will be able to open these files in OOo and the conversion should work.
.pre is the native proprietary format used by Freelance Graphics. OOo will not be able to open these files. IBM owns Lotus and now produces an OOo rehash under the age old Lotus Symphony name. It may be able to open these files:
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotu ... ct_pe.jspa

is someone here? i need help

Well.. EdH already answered your question. OpenOffice.org cannot open Lotus Freelance Graphics files, but apparently Lotus Symphony can. Take a look at the IBM Symphony FAQ... specifically Question 6 and the answer.

Lotus Symphony is a derivative of OpenOffice.org based on an old version of OpenOffice.org. It is available for free download from IBM. If you follow the link EdH provided it will take you to a page that has a download link for Symphony. Download it and install it. Import your PRE presentations, and then export them in a newer/open format that OpenOffice.org can work with. Once you are happy with the results of converting from PRE to a format OpenOffice.rg can handle, you can remove Symphony and you're done.

So far many thanks for your contributions, but I am afraid Symphony can not import a Freelance .PRE file. I have loaded Symphony allright and sure its capable to import a lot of graphic formats, such as photo formats , jpg. bmp etc. but not my desired format. As stated there is a possibility to import via copy and paste, but you must have the .PRE file on screen which is just my problem.
Pls,Is there anyone with more/other ideas ?

Do you have a small PRE file that you can share.... one without any personal or proprietary information in it?

If you do have such a file and it is fairly large, upload it to one of the many free file hosts, for example http://www.fileshost.com/ and post the link here.

Maybe one of the people here can find a solution if they have a PRE file to tinker with.

Here is the download for a test .pre file http://www.fileshost.com/en/file/36212/ ... T-PRE.html
I hope you will be able to look at it. Many thanks in advance.

Lotus offered a program that allowed you to view SmartSuite files without having SmartSuite installed at one time. As a long-time user of SmartSuite, I never had occasion to try it so I don't know if it will open your files, but you can find a link to download the viewer at the bottom of this wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_SmartSuite

I am sorry but again the same story.
I could download and install the program "Keyview" which is made by a company called VERITY who sells SDK's (Software development kits). The program runs ok and is capable of viewing over 200 file formats, but not Freelance .PRE files. !

There should be a PRO-version of keyview which might do it, but I could not find it on the web. http://www.keyview.com/lotus.html Maybe IBM sniffed that version.

I fired up my copy of Freelance and took a look at the supported file formats. The .pre files are from Freelance version 2. I have now idea how the version numbering progressed from there.

There are several possibilities. There is a forum for Smartsuite maintained by IBM at:

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ssforum.nsf

You may wish to register and post a question there to see if anyone has an idea.

There is another group that provides support to Smartsuite users at:

http://xpertss.com/

You could register there and see if they have any ideas.

If you GOOGLE for Smartsuite you can find a variety of folks who will sell you version 9.8.1 for about $25.

If you don't have many files you need converted and aren't in a hurry, you could email them to me and I'll load them into Freelance and save them out as PowerPoint '97 files and send them back. OpenOffice should be able to read them in that format. No guarantees about what gets mangled in the conversions.

I spent some time with this last night as well.. tinkering with a few applications in Linux... but no success. Closest I was able to get was opening prx files which I believe are from the last released version of Freelance. .pre files are from an earlier version.

I think french's suggestions are the best option here.

This is a perfect example of how bad vendor lock-in really is. A company stops releasing application X with has a proprietary file format Y. All your files are in format Y, and no other application can open them because format Y is a closed secret file format. That is the beauty of ODF... it's open... you're not locked into one specific application. OpenOffice.org is not the only office application suite that can read and write ODF formatted files.