MS Word and complex documents
Plastic PPRuNer
Re: MS Word and complex documents
Ghengis, the insuperable problem in your case is that Word 2000 doesn't fully understand the files created with Word 2003. It's not a question of fast saves or change tracking, the saved document format is subtly different between the two.
If it's really a nuisance then get a copy of MSOffice 2003, the Student/Teacher edition is quite cheap. Sometimes it's just easier to give in and be screwed.
If these are complex documents then you won't be happy in a mixed OpenOffice/MSOffice world (unless MS switches to standard XML).
Be interesting to hear your comments on OOo though.
PS: So you're an old Wordstarian too.. WS7d was superb in it's time and still has adherents today. I've even got a copy, but it doesn't understand my printers.
If it's really a nuisance then get a copy of MSOffice 2003, the Student/Teacher edition is quite cheap. Sometimes it's just easier to give in and be screwed.
If these are complex documents then you won't be happy in a mixed OpenOffice/MSOffice world (unless MS switches to standard XML).
Be interesting to hear your comments on OOo though.
PS: So you're an old Wordstarian too.. WS7d was superb in it's time and still has adherents today. I've even got a copy, but it doesn't understand my printers.
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Re: MS Word and complex documents
Mac - that last post struck a chord. I've just speed read (not very well probably) the entire thread and can't see any mention of using the "Save As" option.
Genghis, have you tried saving from Word 2003 using the Save As ... Word 2000 option?
ST
(now grabbing at straws!)
Genghis, have you tried saving from Word 2003 using the Save As ... Word 2000 option?
ST
(now grabbing at straws!)
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Re: MS Word and complex documents
I'll have a look at the "save as" options in Word 2003 when I'm back in the office, but suspect still that a teachers edition of Office 2003 is probably the way ahead.
That said, I had this problem occasionally before upgrading to Word 2003 at work, just not so often, so I'm not certain that'll solve it.
In the meantime, I installed OO. Clearly it does everything I want in terms of functionality, but on a first try...
- It clearly uses enormous amounts of computing power, and my PC ran noticeably slower. Since it's a reasonably new 2.8GHz Celeron, this shouldn't be happening.
- It mucked up the format of my tables, although this was reasonably quick and easy to solve.
- Equations! Some of my equations it regarded as pictures and wouldn't edit. Some other equations, it would open - in a partial load of MS Equation Editor, but missing the "insert characters" bit, so whilst I could move the characters around, I couldn't insert any new ones that weren't on the keyboard.
- I saved it, then re-opened it in Word. Going down the page, everything was still fine, except the equations. Several (not necessarily ones I'd edited in OO) were mucked up completely and I couldn't recover. (They'd sort of turned into vertical lines one pixel thick, very odd).
So, first impressions are that it's sort of there but not quite. The amount of computing power it seems to use, together with the fact that it doesn't handle Word Tables or Equations all that well (and that I've got several Mb worth of them on my HD that I use, read, cut-and-paste from almost daily) works against it in my view at the moment.
But, I shall leave it on for a while and play.
G
That said, I had this problem occasionally before upgrading to Word 2003 at work, just not so often, so I'm not certain that'll solve it.
In the meantime, I installed OO. Clearly it does everything I want in terms of functionality, but on a first try...
- It clearly uses enormous amounts of computing power, and my PC ran noticeably slower. Since it's a reasonably new 2.8GHz Celeron, this shouldn't be happening.
- It mucked up the format of my tables, although this was reasonably quick and easy to solve.
- Equations! Some of my equations it regarded as pictures and wouldn't edit. Some other equations, it would open - in a partial load of MS Equation Editor, but missing the "insert characters" bit, so whilst I could move the characters around, I couldn't insert any new ones that weren't on the keyboard.
- I saved it, then re-opened it in Word. Going down the page, everything was still fine, except the equations. Several (not necessarily ones I'd edited in OO) were mucked up completely and I couldn't recover. (They'd sort of turned into vertical lines one pixel thick, very odd).
So, first impressions are that it's sort of there but not quite. The amount of computing power it seems to use, together with the fact that it doesn't handle Word Tables or Equations all that well (and that I've got several Mb worth of them on my HD that I use, read, cut-and-paste from almost daily) works against it in my view at the moment.
But, I shall leave it on for a while and play.
G
Plastic PPRuNer
Re: MS Word and complex documents
Yes, you're right - OpenOffice is significantly slower and more resource hungry than MSOffice, see http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=120 - and - http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=119
You get what you pay for (or rather, don't pay for). OTOH, OpenOffice is evolving very fast and improving speed is high on the developers priority list. Several revisions will appear this year and by the time OOo 3.0 appears much of this should have been remedied.
The troubles interpreting MSOffice files are hardly OOo's fault - the Microsoft data formats are secret and OOo has to black-box reverse engineer them. It's amazing that they have achieved the level of compatibility that they do have. Simpler documents do not have these problems - I don't normally read or create complex documents and have no problems.
"....I shall leave it on for a while and play..." seems like a good plan.
You get what you pay for (or rather, don't pay for). OTOH, OpenOffice is evolving very fast and improving speed is high on the developers priority list. Several revisions will appear this year and by the time OOo 3.0 appears much of this should have been remedied.
The troubles interpreting MSOffice files are hardly OOo's fault - the Microsoft data formats are secret and OOo has to black-box reverse engineer them. It's amazing that they have achieved the level of compatibility that they do have. Simpler documents do not have these problems - I don't normally read or create complex documents and have no problems.
"....I shall leave it on for a while and play..." seems like a good plan.
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Re: MS Word and complex documents
Sadly, if I didn't tend to regularly create and edit complex documents, I'd never have asked the question in the first place.
It's interesting by comparison the way my lecturing style has gone over the last dozen years.
I started with a combination of 35mm slides and OHP, via slides and video, then powerpoint, now I mostly use a whiteboard/blackboard - give me a couple more years and I'll probably just stand and talk. Similarly, there's much to be said for a pencil sometimes!
G
It's interesting by comparison the way my lecturing style has gone over the last dozen years.
I started with a combination of 35mm slides and OHP, via slides and video, then powerpoint, now I mostly use a whiteboard/blackboard - give me a couple more years and I'll probably just stand and talk. Similarly, there's much to be said for a pencil sometimes!
G
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Re: MS Word and complex documents
GTE,
Have you tried altering the "Compatibility settings" under TOOLS>OPTIONS in Word 2003?
Try setting this to Word 2000 or whatever and see if this makes a difference...
The comapny I work for has about 7000+ people worldwide and although the majoority of offices now run Word 2003 (global roll-out :-), we still need backwards compatibility for the staff to be able to work from home etc.
Our default is to have compatibility set to Word 97 and no-one seems to have any problems....
Just another one to try before you abandon Word.
Regards,
Shuttlebus
Have you tried altering the "Compatibility settings" under TOOLS>OPTIONS in Word 2003?
Try setting this to Word 2000 or whatever and see if this makes a difference...
The comapny I work for has about 7000+ people worldwide and although the majoority of offices now run Word 2003 (global roll-out :-), we still need backwards compatibility for the staff to be able to work from home etc.
Our default is to have compatibility set to Word 97 and no-one seems to have any problems....
Just another one to try before you abandon Word.
Regards,
Shuttlebus
Plastic PPRuNer
Re: MS Word and complex documents
Abiword - http://www.abiword.com/ - is a serious cross-platform wordprocessor with some heavyweight abilities. In some ways I prefer it to OOo Writer. It can import and export OpenDocument files, but is more aimed at cross-platformability and Word (.doc) use.
"Presently, AbiWord can open most Microsoft Word documents well. However, if the document has complicated tables, text boxes, embedded spreadsheets, and so forth, then it might not work as expected. Developing good MS Word filters is a very difficult process, so please bear with us as we work on getting Word documents to open correctly. If you have a Word document which fails to load, please open a Bug and include the document so we can improve the importer.
Saving as .doc - AbiWord can currently save in an MS Word compatible ".doc" format. This is done by saving as Rich Text Format (.rtf) but with a .doc extension. The file extension does not mean that the file is a binary Microsoft Word document and .doc may contain RTF, HTML or plain text. This is a feature — Microsoft themselves have used .doc to exploit a mis-feature of MS-Word.
Some developers and even a few users have suggested that this is dishonest and 'cheating'. In fact this 'cheating' is something Microsoft themselves have done in their own software! (Example: MS Wordpad on Windows 98 claims to save as Microsoft Word 6.0 (.doc) but if you look at the files in a text editor you can see that it is in fact Rich Text Format). There are no plans to support binary MS Word export."
I like Abiword a lot, but I think that OpenOffice have the right idea going with the OASIS OpenDocument format - I'm pretty sure that's where we'll mostly be in 2010 (and thank goodness for that!).
"Presently, AbiWord can open most Microsoft Word documents well. However, if the document has complicated tables, text boxes, embedded spreadsheets, and so forth, then it might not work as expected. Developing good MS Word filters is a very difficult process, so please bear with us as we work on getting Word documents to open correctly. If you have a Word document which fails to load, please open a Bug and include the document so we can improve the importer.
Saving as .doc - AbiWord can currently save in an MS Word compatible ".doc" format. This is done by saving as Rich Text Format (.rtf) but with a .doc extension. The file extension does not mean that the file is a binary Microsoft Word document and .doc may contain RTF, HTML or plain text. This is a feature — Microsoft themselves have used .doc to exploit a mis-feature of MS-Word.
Some developers and even a few users have suggested that this is dishonest and 'cheating'. In fact this 'cheating' is something Microsoft themselves have done in their own software! (Example: MS Wordpad on Windows 98 claims to save as Microsoft Word 6.0 (.doc) but if you look at the files in a text editor you can see that it is in fact Rich Text Format). There are no plans to support binary MS Word export."
I like Abiword a lot, but I think that OpenOffice have the right idea going with the OASIS OpenDocument format - I'm pretty sure that's where we'll mostly be in 2010 (and thank goodness for that!).
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Re: MS Word and complex documents
Well I've set my compatibility options to Word 2000, but looking at the list of things in there, I doubt that it'll make any difference.
I've also looked in the save options, but there isn't a "save as Word 2000" option, only save as Word 97, which I can't do because I know there are things I do with tables (merging cells vertically for example) that will be mucked up.
Looks like spending money is it
G
I've also looked in the save options, but there isn't a "save as Word 2000" option, only save as Word 97, which I can't do because I know there are things I do with tables (merging cells vertically for example) that will be mucked up.
Looks like spending money is it
G
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Re: MS Word and complex documents
Originally Posted by Genghis the Engineer
... there's much to be said for a pencil sometimes!
Sorry, I couldn't resist!G, do you work with master and sub documents or do you have everything in one humungous document? If you broke it down into master and sub docs, would that make it easier to edit the Word2000 compatible bits without stuffing up the whole document?
*sigh, just a thought*
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Re: MS Word and complex documents
Yes and sort-of.
For bigger documents I do work with master and sub-documents, and this does help.
Right at the moment I'm writing a textbook, which currently is only 2˝Mb and about 60 pages, so I can't honestly see that it'll help much, just become a blasted nuisance to me.
G
For bigger documents I do work with master and sub-documents, and this does help.
Right at the moment I'm writing a textbook, which currently is only 2˝Mb and about 60 pages, so I can't honestly see that it'll help much, just become a blasted nuisance to me.
G
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Re: MS Word and complex documents
Genghis,
We were just visited by the Microshaft sales team yesterday - trying to sell us on their "Select" agreements. During the discussions it was highlighted that where we have a user license at the office, a user is entitled to use the license on one other PC - either at home or on a notebook. Check with your IT department to see if this applies to your outfit. If it does, it might save you from having to buy Word 2003 for yourself.
We were just visited by the Microshaft sales team yesterday - trying to sell us on their "Select" agreements. During the discussions it was highlighted that where we have a user license at the office, a user is entitled to use the license on one other PC - either at home or on a notebook. Check with your IT department to see if this applies to your outfit. If it does, it might save you from having to buy Word 2003 for yourself.
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Re: MS Word and complex documents
Genghis, one of the msoft articles talks about doing ctrl+a to select everything then F9 to update the field codes. This should allow you to see exactly which line has the problem, then maybe you could edit/reconstruct that line and then try saving?
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Re: MS Word and complex documents
Originally Posted by Blacksheep
Genghis,
We were just visited by the Microshaft sales team yesterday - trying to sell us on their "Select" agreements. During the discussions it was highlighted that where we have a user license at the office, a user is entitled to use the license on one other PC - either at home or on a notebook. Check with your IT department to see if this applies to your outfit. If it does, it might save you from having to buy Word 2003 for yourself.
We were just visited by the Microshaft sales team yesterday - trying to sell us on their "Select" agreements. During the discussions it was highlighted that where we have a user license at the office, a user is entitled to use the license on one other PC - either at home or on a notebook. Check with your IT department to see if this applies to your outfit. If it does, it might save you from having to buy Word 2003 for yourself.
G
Plastic PPRuNer
Just make sure you tell them you're thinking of switching to OpenOffice, that'll bring them out in a veritable rash of discounts!
Teasing MS sales reps can be quite fun.
"Select" is it? - they ARE getting worried! Maybe soon they'll have to pay us to use their software........
Teasing MS sales reps can be quite fun.
"Select" is it? - they ARE getting worried! Maybe soon they'll have to pay us to use their software........
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...tell them you're thinking of switching to OpenOffice
If you want to really put the wind up a Microshaft "tax collector", tell him you're thinking of running all your servers on Linux...
