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[Solved] Setting OOo 2.4 to open MS Office docs

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 11:02 am
by wolflore
Hi

Can someone help me. I've rerun the setup utility via Add/Remove programs so that OOo 2.4 is the default program for all MS Office documents. For some reason it doesn't seem to want to open DOC files. If I go in to the Properties dialogue box of a MS Word file and change the Opens with dialogue it just comes up with an unknown program.

Can anyone help?

Cheers
Anthony

PS - I'm running Microsoft Word for Windows® 97, on a PC running Windows 2000 Prof' (don't ask why!)

Re: Setting OOo 2.4 to open MS Office docs

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 10:21 am
by Phil
Hi,

I have a couple of questions in order to be able to help you:

So you have installed both Word 97 and OpenOffice on the same PC, right?
What happens if you double-click a .doc file in Windows Explorer?
Can you open .doc files if you start OpenOffice and use File > Open?
What about other MS Office files (.xls, .ppt) - do they work?
wolflore wrote:it just comes up with an unknown program.
Which programs are shown? Maybe you can post a screenshot of the dialog here?

KR, phil

Re: Setting OOo 2.4 to open MS Office docs

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 4:41 pm
by wolflore
Hi,

Yes I have MS Word and OOo 2.4 installed on the same machine.

Here is a screen shot of a Word file's properties.
Image

If you right click on the DOC file and 'Open With' swriter - ensuring to to select the always use this program option - the file will open with OOo.

Image

When you click on the files after this is when it throws up the error that it can not find the file swriter.exe

What I did then was reopen the document properties. From there I selected the 'Change' button to swap to swriter - it was still set to open with MS Word.

Image

Note the Change in file icon from the usual Word W to the one above the dialogue box.

Now, yesterday after I had done this an windows error still came up when you clicked on the file to open it. Today they open! Go figure :?:

So, thank you for your time but the problem seems to have solved itself!?

Kind regards
Anthony

Re: Setting OOo 2.4 to open MS Office docs

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 4:57 pm
by Phil
This is quite strange indeed, but if it works now everything is fine! :)

Did you do a reboot between yesterday and today?
Because that often sorts out all sorts of Windows problems including file associations etc.
So this might explain it...

Thanks for adding "[Solved]" at the beginning of your first post title (by using the edit button)!

Best regards,
phil

Re: Setting OOo 2.4 to open MS Office docs - Solved!

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 5:03 pm
by wolflore
Hi Phil,

I did a reboot yesterday which didn't seem to resolve the issue. Thought the rest over night did! Windows machines...don't you just love 'em! :lol:

Re: Setting OOo 2.4 to open MS Office docs - Solved!

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 6:19 pm
by Phil
wolflore wrote:Windows machines...don't you just love 'em! :lol:
Absolutely - things happening are really often weird! :D

Best regards,
phil