Hi all,
Besides adding an "x" to the file extentions (ex: *.docx , *.xlsx , ...),
Office 2007 seems to make files completely unrecognisable by Open Office.
Is there a solution ?
many thanks
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The new "Office Open XML" format in Office 2007 isn't recommended as it is partially proprietary and not well supported outside Office 2007 (so you can't send files to people even with other versions of Office). Office 2007 SP2 adds support for the Open Document Format which is an open format, though Microsoft messed up the Excel spreadsheet compatibility.
It's best to save in DOC for interchange with other people as a vast majority of people people can't open DOCX or ODF.
For your own use, I recommend ODF, but if you use DOCX, OpenOffice.org 3 and up will work with it.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 improves this support and was just released with a portable version coming this week.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
OpenOffice.org Portable 3.1 is on the way and will be available in the next days.
Paid for Software more or less?
What You need is OSS!
I've been reading on this for a bit and looking forward to seeing the improved appearance.
PortableApps.com Advocate
Not a great difference in a local reinstall... Only it writes them faster
I know about the performance improvements and there's a few new things like over lining and new form of highlighting but I was under the impression that the applications appearance was supposed to have improved. From inserted graphics to the rendering of the menus and buttons.
PortableApps.com Advocate
Maybe i didn't notice because i used an alternative icon pack & it read it form my old install...
Back when Office 2007 was first released the only way to read its new x-format files was with late betas of OpenOffice.org v3. Open these files in OpenOffice.org and re-write them in earlier office formats. Simpler than downloading the massive extenstion for earlier Office versions.
*.docx is just a zip file.
steve_gutry - August 14, 2008 - 5:41pm
If you are really stuck & need to view the file without using a convertor, you can rename the docx file to a zip file. Extract the contents then open the xml file in a web browser/html editor or notepad. There will be a lot of xml formating code but look for the lines starting with (wt), this will be the actual text of the document. Also when you unzip the file you will see a subdirectory called media. If there are any pictures in the file, they will be here. I did find a small and useful converter on the "http://www.nativewinds.montana.com/" website. It is called docx2rtf.
I know this isn't really the aim of the site but unfortunately there is a Microsoft option. If you have Office 2003 and you don't feel like installing OpenOffice, you can always install Microsoft's converter. They told us to download it at work before we got 2007 installed.
The installed size of this converter is approximately 90MB.
What!!
Open Office takes less space that this and the converter I use is only 3MB.
What converter do you use? Is it portable?
PortableApps.com Advocate
The one he mentioned 4 postings up is this one:
http://www.nativewinds.montana.com/software/docx2rtf.html
Whether it's portable or not I don't know.
Ed
I used JauntePE to make mine portable.
There is a lot of good & small freeware available and as you know, we are still waiting until they can be allowed on this site. Until then, I will normally use JauntePe to portabilize the programs that appeal to me. It is very fast to do & works with most of the programs that I have encountered. There are some failures however.
Hi Peter,
Ask the person who sent you the file to please save it in Open Document format. The latest update for Office 2007 allows you to save all files to Open Document format.
They have not got the format down to a t yet as it does alter your Open Office documents (I tested my timesheet spreadsheet) slightly when using Office 2007 to edit it, but they have taken the first step, even if it took them far longer than promised.
Regards
Paul