Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 125545
Issues Importing Text from MS Word Docs & Emails
Last modified: 2015-04-22 15:17:25 UTC
This may be more of a request than a bug report, but the 'I have a problem' pages need editing. Having been in publishing for many years, I am quite familiar that almost always text formatting (paragraph formats, spacing, page formats, etc.) are lost when importing text from secondary sources. Recently, my spell checker stopped working. The solutions listed at the site did not quite solve the issue (it did lead me in the general vicinity). It appears that when bringing in text or opening a new document, a language must be specified for that individual document in order for the dictionary to work. OPTION FOUND UNDER: TOOLS - LANGUAGE - FOR ALL TEXT - ENGLISH (in my case). This solution was not listed as a fix among the solutions for a spell checker not working. In addition, my question to the developers is why should this be a necessary step considering that a default language was chosen. Those companies/users interested in multiple language dictionaries would be quite familiar with this extra step, while most users would just be floundering out there wondering why has their spell checker stopped working. I attempted to copy and paste the text into a new document to bypass the issue but found that for some reason a NO DESIGNATION for the language was attached to the copied text. I will also tell you that having been in the publishing industry, I truly appreciated the software of Apple computers. It was the one O/S that had THE best text importing capabilities. I could import database and text files from PCs, Rainbow's, NBI's, Wangs, Mainframes, and the list goes on of file types imported using that little work horse. It was my handiest tool in the publishing industry, and then later when I worked creating databases from a variety of file formats. Maybe this could be a signature feature of OpenOffice that would catapult you past that obnoxiously proprietary M/S.
I was able to create an issue where formatting errors occured when opening a “.docx” file that was created by Microsoft Word 2003. The steps that I took were ● Create a “docx” file using MS word with the following format ○ Create a 2x1 table ○ In each table create a list of >3 ascending levels ○ In the last item on the list in the left column, select the italic formatting option ○ Select the last item on the list on the left and the first item on the list on the right and select bold. ○ Save the DOCX ● Open the docx in Open Office. The first item in the column on the right is italicized. Test Environment Hardware: Lenovo Thinkpad T430s, Core i7, 16GB RAM Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 OO Version: 4.1.1 Build ID: AOO411m6(Build:9775) Rev. 1617669 20140813 09:06:54 (Mi, 13 Aug 2014)
I just attempted to recreate this bug using my version of MicroSoft Office 2010. I did not see this issue in that version.
I did some research on the internet and found that over 70% of the TechRepublic members are using the 2010 and 2007 versions. Out of 3,483 votes, only 13% are using 2003. This information was dated 3/22/13.
I used the steps provided by the author (except I didn't have access to Word 2003) of this defect to attempt to recreate it. I am including attachments of the results that I got. ● Created a “docx” file using MS word 2010 with the following format ○ Create a 2x1 table ○ In each table create a list of >3 ascending levels ○ In the last item on the list in the left column, select the italic formatting option ○ Select the last item on the list on the left and the first item on the list on the right and select bold. ○ Save the DOCX ● Open the docx in Open Office. The first item in the column on the right is italicized. Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 OO Version: 4.1.1
Created attachment 84683 [details] Recreation attempts
The subsequent comments on my original post appear to be attempts to pinpoint certain types of import errors. Essentially, comments on my parenthetical comment on building a niche for OpenOffice as being the 'workhorse' that Apple was used for when importing/exporting documents across different platforms. They are off topic to my post, and to keep the forum clean and useful to future users, these comments should be moved to a more appropriate area of the forum. I would have reported the comments, but could not find this option. To further derail my original thread: From what I am reading, even MS is having issues with their newest version's inability to accomplish a clean conversion from pervious versions. Long rant on MS's mediocre software edited out by writer.