Importing MS word DOC & DOCX documents

[sabai]

I am just starting to use OpenOffice 3.2.0. I have been trying to import MS word tables in either DOC or DOCX formats. They open fine but lose the formatting. I have seen some old threads here, but none specific to Ver3.2.0. Is there any fix for this or do you have to reformat if you import from MS Word? If so, its too time consuming to be useful. Thanks for any help. Sabai

[Hagar Delest]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

do you have to reformat if you import from MS Word? If so, its too time consuming to be useful.

Indeed. If you've to work with MS Office formats, better buy MS Office. There would be few points using OOo if you don't use its native format (ODF).

But keep in mind that keeping those MS Office formats is what MS want with their vendor lock-in policy.

The first sticky of the Beginner section has some links about the OOXML format (.docx, ...). See MS Office 2007 OOXML file format (docx, xslx, pptx, ppsx).

Thanks to add '[Solved]' at beginning of your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

[jrkrideau]

If so, its too time consuming to be useful. Thanks for any help. Sabai

This depends on what you are doing, at least with .doc My experience is very limited with docx so I cannot really comment.

For most relatively plain documents, there is little or no need to reformat assuming whoever produced the MS documents knew a little bit about sensible formatting. With complicated documents you may have problems but, then, experienced MS users report similar problems just moving between MS versions.

Once you have a feel for OOo styles it is usually pretty easy to clean up most MS weird formatting issues.

I'd suggest making sure that you have Tools > Options> Load and Save > MicroSoft Options all checked.