On 05/15/2009 02:07 PM, David Patrick wrote: > I have tried searching the various sources of information but with > little success. > > I am having trouble opening .docx documents that have been emailed to > me. These documents have consisted of a series of text boxes with text > inside them. > > OOo3.1, and OOo3.0 before I upgraded, will open the document, but it > loses *all* the formatting. Instead it forces all the text to the top > of the page. > > As an example, I have placed the original, and a PDF output of what > OOO3.1 does to it at http://www.davidpatrick.name/openoffice. > > Can anyone either tell me, or point me in the right direction for a > solution to this problem? > > Many Thanks, > David >
Interesting... OOo 3.1.0 does as your pdf file shows. However, (Ubuntu)3.1.0 - linux - from the PPA actually keeps the graphics at the top and bottom of the page correctly. The text in between is still messed up, but the rest is fine. The (U)OOo is based on go-oo: http://go-oo.org/ which is also available in Word versions: http://go-oo.org/download/ if you are interested. Other scouts/users/parents will also not be able to open the file in Word 97 - Word xyz, so it makes no sense to publish/push such a document out even to MS Word users. Even with newer versions of MS Word, you'd still need to download a 27.5MB 'FileFormatConverters.exe' file and install. Keep in mind that many 'others' may have limited disk space, older MS Word users w/earlier than Word 2000, can't even install the coverter pack - so they won't even be able to open the file at all. For the purposes of testing I installed the 'FileFormatConverters.exe' on a WinXPPro/SP3 w/MS Office 2002 on it. I then brought up the file and encountered this warning: <quote> Because this file was created in a newer version of Word, it has been converted to a format that you can work with. However, the following items have been affected: o Features that do not exist in version of Word have been removed o Layout and the ability to edit certain features have changed o ActiveX controls with properties stors as XML have been removed </quote> So I then open the file & the data is there w/text bubbles. I then save the file as a .doc and get a warning that the file must be saved using the converter and that doing so may create a security risk... I open the saved .doc file in MS Word 2002 and the file is an absolute mess; top graphic is 1/3rd down the page, bottom graphics are messed up, and no, *zero*, text is apparent. I then open the saved .doc file in OOo3.01 and it's a blank doc - no graphics, no nothing. Now is probably a good time to remind your scout post of these issues. Perhaps you can create a new scout badge for 'OpenSource/OpenOffice.org/CommonSenseITApplications'... and 'roast' the creator of the .docx file at the next outing. :-) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
