Dowloaded Open Office yesterday, can't save anything.

[riverdeep]

I'm working on an important document, and the learning curve is hard, but it's ok. I finally finish, and go to file> save as. And then the dialog box comes up to save, I want to save it as an odt file (whatever that is, I guess it's the native format for Open Office) and really important, as a Word document (.doc). Also as a PDF. As soon as I click the save button, the dialog box flashes for a hundreth of a second, but IT DOES NOT SAVE. Anything, no matter the format.

I'm running XP pro (SP2). The 'automatic file name extension' box is checked. If someone knows anything about this, let me know. I've transferred the text to another processor, but the little details I made aren't showing up and have to be redone by hand.

[riverdeep]

1. Nevermind, I figured it out.

Knew it would be something so stupid. I just wasn't giving it any filename. My normal processor assigns it a name based on title, this left it blank as default. Thanks anyway.

[RoyGBiv]

2. Glad you figured it out ...

I just now read the OP, and I was at a loss.

FWIW, the odt format is the OpenDocument format. It is OpenOffice's default, and the intent of it is for the format to be usable by anyone.

[riverdeep]

3. Thanks for the reply.

Yeah, I figured it was something really simple I was doing, or in this case not doing.

The program is really quite impressive, but there still seem to be some compatibility issues with Microsoft Word. For example, stitching together two documents into one. Well, you can do it by opening one of the documents and using the insert file function (and doing a manual 'page break'), or you can open a document, go to just at the beginning of the next blank page, and then copy and paste one into the other. I'm sure there's other ways including the Master Document stuff which I haven't messed around with at all. But when I do the insert method, the final document refuses to open in Word, when I do copy and paste-it does. Weird. Also, I sent a .doc file to someone yesterday created by this, and they said the file was corrupted. The formatting issues still seem to need some work, and really, it's not in Microsoft's best interest to play nice with Open Office in any way.

But overall I'm very impressed with it, especially since Microsoft's version of the entire suite costs something like $500 (which almost no one actually pays, but still). And it does a lot of things right, like being able to create a pdf file directly from the toolbar. This thing is very labor intensive, with millions and millions of lines of code. If they could get more high caliber volunteers, I would imagine it could be like firefox was to internet explorer.

I can't wait to try all the other programs, the calc, the draw program.

[RoyGBiv]

6. I like Calc ...

I'm actually not a big fan of Write. It's an aesthetic thing mostly as well as some irrational prejudice. (I look at it and *see* Java.) Of course I'm not a fan of Word either. More and more I've been using Emacs customized to work a lot like Wordstar did.

But, yeah ... I've experienced those same issues. OO can open up and work with pretty much anything. Word doesn't return the favor, which is actually a problem of Word not allowing OO to use its format properly.

At any rate, I'm attempting to move everything I do to ODF and force people to deal with it. They've been doing that to me for years with Word, so I'm paying back now. :)

[SKKY]

9. There you go again! Showing off!

And I bet your e-mail client is Pine, huh??? :rofl: :thumbsup:

[RoyGBiv]

10. I laugh at pine ...

It's slnr and mail all the way for me, BABEEEEE ... Hell, I'll just telnet in and read it with 'less'. :)

Seriously, though ... it's a writer thing. I don't like using a mouse when I'm writing. It breaks the flow. It's similar to why some people who write a lot still use pencils or typewriters. With Wordstar, you never had to use a mouse. Ever. Professional writers all over the world threw themselves off buildings (metaphorically, of course, and only after building a plot that justified it) when Wordstar went away.

OO has a lot of keyboard shortcuts, but I already have the Wordstar/Emacs stuff in memory, and I still don't think you can do block cut/paste with the keyboard in OO.

Now *this* is a word processor:



;-)

[pokerfan]

12. The pinnacle of word processing

was WordPerfect 5.1:

[RoyGBiv]

14. Ahhhh ...

That's pleasing. :)

I still have my install discs. That was the last word processor I *gladly* paid for.

[pokerfan]

15. There really was something said for the days

of just banging away at the keyboard without regard.Editing and writing are completely different tasks.

[pokerfan]

8. FYI, odt = OpenDocument Text document

.odp (presentation)
.ods (spreadsheet)
.odg (graphics)
.odb (database)

I'm a big fan of OpenOffice.

[hermetic]

4. re your comment there, Roy

I use OO. I did some editing for a friend who composed in MS Word. I could open his document but when I sent it back with the .odt extension he got nothing but gobbledygook. I then tried saving in OO with a .doc extension but got the same results. In the end I would paste the copy into WordPad and send it back and that was the only way we could share a document.

I was under the impression that OO docs could be used by anyone but that didn't seem to be the case here. I will mention that my friend was not very computer wise. Any thoughts on this? Did I miss a step somewhere along the way?

Thanks.

ETA: Yeah, what riverdeep there just said, same time as me.

[ConcernedCanuk]

5. hmmm

.
.
.

[RoyGBiv]

7. Word and ODF

Word isn't set up to use Open Document Format (ODF) out of the box. However, you can install the Sun plugin for it, and it'll open them just fine.

http://www.windowsreference.com/ms-office/how-to-open-odt-files-in-microsoft-word-20072003/

[riverdeep]

11. An update on the my experience.

Regretfully, I've stopped using Open Office for anything 'official'. I have had too many problems where I send a file and they either can't open it or it comes out looking a damn mess. The fancier the formatting you do, the worse it gets, which really defeats the purpose of a full-featured program in the first place.

I realize that it's really a Microsoft problem, but if you're dealing with people whose business you desperately need, you can't dictate the rules and tell them to download this plug-in or whatever to make files created in Open Office work seamlessly. No one likes downloading stuff if they don't have to. Fair or not, Open Office is the one that has to adapt to Microsoft, not the other way around. If or when they can do that without flaws, I'll be back. Too bad, because Writer is a nice program, overall.

[RoyGBiv]

13. I understand the issue ...

And I'd agree there's no good solution when it all boils down to a question of whether you get to eat, not as long as our laws continue to favor monopolies like Microsoft.

However, I do feel compelled to disagree somewhat with your last few comments. In the present context it's not a matter of whether it's fair. It's a matter of what's possible. Microsoft owns a patent on their own document format. They *strongly* resisted (cash included) the adoption of an open document format as a standard that they did not control for this very reason. As long as they maintain a lock on the creation of documents in their proprietary format and as long as Microsoft refuses to cooperate, there's nothing Sun can really do about it.

It's a classic catch-22.

As with many things, it will take government level intervention for this truly to change materially. That could be something as simple as requiring all government documents to be distributed in an open format. This is happening in Europe to some extent and at the local level. Colleges and universities are also tentatively starting to shift to an open document standard.

But, that'll take time.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

16. I use OO on my Mandriva box

I consider Open Office average at best. I've had too many problems with it to mention, but it's a serviceable application (and has the added advantage of being free).

That being said, Sun has pissed me off with their constant, annoying updates for Java. There seems to be a new one almost every day on some of the machines I support. I get tired of the constant updates for Windows, ITunes, Java, etc, and I don't want to have to deal with them for Open Office, too. If I could get away with removing Java on every machine I use, I would - Sun has become almost as bad as MS when it comes to bloat-ware.