Hi :) ODF is used by a wide variety of programs; Google docs, Caligra/KOffice, AbiWord = basically all of them except MS Office and even MS Office is starting to offer the option. It's not 'just' AOO and LO. So the format should be around for a fair while.
That said it does make sense to have a back-up in a different format and Pdf displays the same on all different platforms so it might even be useful. It might be good to post a bug-report about it. Doc is usually a good format for sharing and collaborating with other people but it is a proprietary format and as such has always been subject to the slightest whims of a single 3rd party profit-making company. Regards from Tom :) --- On Sun, 25/11/12, Declan Moriarty <[email protected]> wrote: From: Declan Moriarty <[email protected]> Subject: [libreoffice-users] Regression: LibreOffice 3.5.6.2 gives error "Read Error: Not a winword97 file" wen opening some Word 97 files. To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, 25 November, 2012, 19:49 I have been converting various documents to MS Word XP and ODF format from floppy disks. I am going through the directories to check to see if the documents have been converted properly before finally archiving the converted documents to CD/DVD. The was a group of Word 97 documents that I had converted a year ago that I am now looking at. I was shocked that some of these Word 97 documents won't now open in LibreOffice. I was running LibreOffice 3.5.6.2. I upgraded to LibreOffice 3.6.3. with no effect, it still doesn't open these Word 97 files. Note that the majority of the files open. These are simple text files with no graphics or tables in them. The files that fail have no pattern to them. I re-installed Open Office 3.2.1 and they will open with that. I checked other older versions of LibO and found that LibreOffice 3.5.6.2 does NOT open the files. There are a few files like this that won't open. I am currently going through the directories and re-saving any that don't work with the word "re-saved" in the filename keeping the original Word 97 file so I can keep the date. There are 3 files I have done this too but I know there are more. Should I start a new bug for this? This doesn't feel nice to know that the major free office suite has problems opening Word 97 files. Luckily I have converted these to ODF files but I also want to convert them to PDF files just in case ODF stops being used. I am using LibreOffice on Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. These problem files will open in TextEdit. I am thinking of using iWork Pages because it tracks properly in Lion that I will upgrade to once I have sorted out all these conversions. Hopefully since TextEdit can open these "Problem" Word 97 files Pages will too. Declan Moriarty -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
