Hi :) This is part of the reason for keeping existing versions of MS Office during the migration period.
Existing templates and documents hopefully work well on existing versions of MS Office. They don't always work so well on newer versions of MS Office but upgrading the templates is then considered part of the cost of the upgrade. MS Office 2007 uses a "transitional" OOXML format. MS Office 2010 uses a different one. MS Office 2013 uses yet another by default but allow "strict" OOXML through the File - "Save As ..." menu. There was some attempt to 'backport' the OOXML format to 2003 and earlier but i'm not sure which of the "transitional" formats was used or if it was yet another version. Mostly MS Office 2003 and earlier use a previous MS format that had finally become fully interoperable with many other programs, suites and usable cross-platform but MS chose that moment to start using OOXML which promised (but apparently failed to deliver) the promise of interoperability that the older format had just achieved. The new OOXML format kinda forces everyone to keep buying their newer and newer versions of MS Office. MS Office is one of the biggest income streams for the profit making company. By contrast LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Caligra/KOffice, IBM Lotus Symphony and many other programs all use ODF and can easily be set to default to the ISO standard that works exactly the same in all versions of all programs, except MS Office. So, sticking with MS formats and MS programs ensures needing to upgrade all the templates every 3 years or so. Moving to LibreOffice means upgrading to the ODF formats and templates this one time. The additional advantage with migrating to LibreOffice (or OpenOffice) is that it is possible to do so without losing your existing version of MS Office. MS Office doesn't really allow that as an option. Well, it does but it's difficult to do and leads to confusions and problems. I've done it but it's really not worth the hassle. So, keeping existing MS Office for existing templates and documents is smart. New templates and documents need to start being made on LibreOffice but you can still use the old ones on MS Office. Plus it gives you more time to upgrade existing templates and test they work before becoming dependant on them. Regards from Tom :) On 4 April 2014 10:02, Alex Thurgood <[email protected]> wrote: > Le 02/04/2014 06:54, Sqwuiddy a écrit : > > > Whoa !! Too many questions in one post. > > >> Part of our company has moved completely to LibreOffice and removed >> Microsoft Office from their computers. I have tried programming mail merge >> templates on my computer, and then having them open it on theirs, and the > > I hope that the migrated templates are in ODF format (ott), or else you > are heading for trouble... > > >> documents will not merge. The first error we encountered was that the IF >> statements that I built didn't function at all. I simply wanted to make an >> "X" appear when a field contained a certain value. These were if statements >> that would function on my computer. The second error was that... well, none >> of > > IF statements should work, at least within ODF documents, as far as I know. > > >> the merge fields merged. When I re-inserted them they worked fine, but they >> wouldn't pull from the database even after re-registering it. My question >> here is, does Word give Libre Writer a leg up if both programs are on one >> computer? Is that why when I moved a document I'd programmed and tested to > > No, Word does not help Writer in any way here to my knowledge. More > likely it comes down to the fact that your template when transferred > must contain the same paths to the data source (which you don't mention > in detail). From the rest of your post, it appears that you are merging > from an Excel sheet ? For the mailmerge to work reproducibly, your ODF > document must reference the Excel sheet as a datasource in the same way > as on your own machine, and if the datasource is registered with LO, it > is written into the user configuration. > > >> >> Nested IF Statements: >> >> Is this possible? I have tried a variety of things and I've done a good deal >> of research, and I've hit a wall. We cannot move forward if we do not have > > No idea, as I've never tried this. > > > >> >> IF Statements resulting in a Mail Merge Field: >> >> So far I have only been able to make conditional mail merge fields >> hide/appear using hidden sections. This is not a practical technique for us, >> as our documents are built almost entirely on conditionally revealed values. >> I have researched this as much as I could, it seems I cannot create a >> conditional statement that results in a mail merge field, but I wanted to >> confirm. > > > My understanding was that hidden sections was the route to choose in > order to obtain what you want. It might be possible to obtain something > similar via User variables, which are stored in the document, but the > number of these that you can define are limited (4 or 6 or something so > small as to be practically useless ?). > > There are other techniques available that do not rely on the UI to do > this, including setting variables within the document as any given > character, and then using a scripting framework to control replacement > of those variables with the values you want and have a user driven > interface, but most of these are command line solutions (Python, Java, > Rexx, etc) > > >> >> Formatting Fields: >> >> We regularly use a formatting switch on our mail merge fields in Word 2010 >> called "DollarText." This takes a number from an Excel spreadsheet and >> spells it out, like below: >> >> Cell Value: $1,231.67 >> Formatted: One thousand, two hundred and thirty one dollars and sixty seven >> cents. >> >> We have other switches that we need to use as well, but those don't seem >> available in the list of additional formats. Is there a workaround for this, >> or am I missing something? I have to admit, I don't fully understand how to >> build custom formats (I haven't found much documentation on them at all). > > You would probably require a macro to convert a number to spelled-out > text, there used to be one around in the shape of an extension that > could do this, but I haven't checked recently. As for user defined > formats, these tend to be limited to fairly simple string formats, > otherwise you're going to have to devise a macro to do it for you. > > >> >> Check Boxes: >> >> FormCheckBoxes from Word do not translate in Writer. Meaning, I can open >> Word 97-2003 documents containing these functional check boxes with Libre >> Writer but they do not print. Is there a setting somewhere that I need to >> switch or perhaps a better alternative? I have tried retemplating these >> documents in Libre using Writer's FormCheckBoxes but they are impossible for >> me to place on a table. Wingdings are also not an option. > > Non-printing of Word checkboxes is/was a known bug. Don't know if that > has been fixed, or if a fix is even in the works. I have always found > that using Writer checkbox controls is fraught with dissatisfaction > because they are too small, do not scale well, and do not allow you to > choose the tick mark character. > > >> >> Table-Intensive Documents: >> >> We build forms that go to court, so they have to be laid out in tables >> exactly as the court requires. Most of the time we build these forms on >> tables in Word. When opened in Libre Writer, the tables break, cells expand, >> and other such things occur. I spent 4 hours last week trying to rebuild one > > Tables and nested table import from Word are still problematic, due to > incomplete (or buggy) filter implementation and differences in the specs > of each product which define how tables should be handled. > > > >> for a firm that doesn't have access to Microsoft Office and had no luck. >> After I finally finished my rebuilding, I saved the document as a Writer >> document to prevent further issue with compatibility, and to my absolute >> dismay I discovered that it turned all of the mail merge fields into text. I > > You seem to be expecting perfect transition from a heavily MS-Office > centric document usage to LibreOffice without having to reconsider how > the various objects in these documents are managed by the corresponding > software - as you have found out, this simply doesn't happen. > > >> We have already built hundreds of mail merge templates in Word. In order to >> continue to function through the conversion from Word to Writer, we need to >> be able to merge these and not rebuild them all immediately. However, >> simple, very simple, documents have been crashing Writer like we were in a >> derby and on fire. This isn't just with one, but a great majority of our >> templates. Is this common? They are Word 97-2003 documents I am opening in >> Libre Writer 4.0. > > I would recommend switching to a more recent version of LibreOffice than > 4.0, which was decidedly buggy (not that there aren't any with 4.1.5.x > or 4.2.x.x, but the doc and docx filters have been improved since 4.0). > Note that Word 2003 format was an incomplete transitional OOXML for > which it is very hard to provide adequate import/export filters, because > it supported both old and new MS specific document objects, and even > then did so incompletely. You should not expect MS 2003 xml formats to > be imported correctly. You might fare better with Word 97 only formats > when importing, but even these (see table problems) will not be perfect. > > > >> >> Also, below are some fun, plain-text formulas I built in Word that we use on >> every day templates, just to give you an idea of the level of complexity I'm >> talking about. >> > > >> Can these be recreated in Libre Writer without learning to code in Pearl and >> C++? >> > > Frankly, they could be coded in LO Basic, and yes, that means, having to > learn it - its structure and objects are not the same as MS VBA. > > > Alex > > > > > > > > -- > To unsubscribe 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 -- To unsubscribe 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
