Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

hi
what is status re opening .docx, .pptx etc. with open office?

regards

AOO can open most of these. I say most because there are exceptions and there is not 100% compatibility. Are you seeing something in paricular?

Only Microsoft products can cover all aspects of these file formats which is intended to be so. It is a vital part of the business model that only Microsoft software can open Microsoft file formats.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... .aspx?id=4 (Word&RTF Viewer)
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... aspx?id=10 (Excel Viewer)
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... .aspx?id=6 (Powerpoint Viewer)
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... .aspx?id=3 (Compatibility pack for OOXML docx, xlsx, pptx)

The above packages can be downloaded for free. They do work under Linux/Wine. Together with a virtual PDF printer they can be used to convert MS documents to PDF.

If you need to co-edit the same documents with MS Office and OpenOffice, there is no technical reason to not use the old binary file formats (.doc, .xls and .ppt).

You can't run docx and pptx properly with OpenOffice, it still screws up formatting in most cases. If you want the best compatibility with Microsoft Office (beside MSO itself) my advice goes out for SoftMaker Office. It lets you open / save all kinds of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats faithfully, I never had any problems going back and forth, and I use it for two years now. SoftMaker's import and export filters are unrivaled IMO. You should download the free trial version from their website and try out if it works for you.

Have you tried LibreOffice?

When did the formatting issues start? I don't use impress often but in February i had no problems with compatibility between power point and impress. I used it for editing and it did really well. Haven't needed it again until tonight. Now the formatting is all messed up.

Softmaker FreeOffice seems do do a nice job with MS Office document layout. However, there are issues that users may want to know about before installing. Moderators have requested that I post my findings, so I made a separate thread (click here). With that, users with more experience in using Softmaker products can "fill in the blanks" and otherwise comment, as I have only done very basic tests using the free suite.

moluvsdisneymagic wrote:When did the formatting issues start? I don't use impress often but in February i had no problems with compatibility between power point and impress. I used it for editing and it did really well. Haven't needed it again until tonight. Now the formatting is all messed up.

It was always there and it will never end. In February you opened different files than the files you opened today. The same files you opened in February should look the same in AOO 4.1, otherwise it would be a bug that should be reported in order to get fixed.

Hi,
When am currently working on open office ppt it shows me the following message repeatedly.
"A problem caused the program to stop working correctly,Windows will close the program".
why this happens?
Please guide me..
And also guide me with formats open office supports.
In which format I should save my file so that it supports my saved files.

Thanks.

There is discussion earlier in this thread concerning formats OpenOffice supports. For best stability you should use OpenOffice's native formats (,odt, .ods .odp etc) If you wish for 100% compatibility with MS Office, you should acquire and use MS Office.

To try to stabilise your troublesome file you should start by by deleting or renaming your OpenOffice user profile. As you are using Windows do this by:

Close OpenOffice and the Quickstarter. Open File Explorer. Copy and paste %appdata%\OpenOffice\4 in the File Explorer Address Bar (not the search engine) and press Enter. Delete or Rename the "user" folder. Start OpenOffice.