[Discuss] LibreOffice and .docx files

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Mon, Dec 04, 2017 at 08:25:45PM -0500, Nancy Allison wrote:
> Hello, all.
> 
> I am using Ubuntu 16.04 and LibreOffice 5.1.6.2.
> 
> I've been sent a .docx file with a fairly complex layout, and the layout is
> trashed immediately upon opening in LibreOffice. I know from past
> experience that docx files that I've modified in LibreOffice are, if
> possible, even nastier when reopened in Word.
> 
> Is there a Word-compatible open source program that truly does not trash
> the formatting? Or is it simply not possible to pass documents back and
> forth between Word and an open source program like LibreOffice or
> OpenOffice? I used Open Office years ago, haven't used it recently, it used
> to trash the files, too.
> 
> All suggestions gratefully received.

It's an arms race in which Microsoft gets to set the default, and not tell
anyone what they're doing. Then they get to change it every so often -
with the advent of Office 360, all the time.

You would think that this poses problems of backwards compatibility with
older copies of Word, and you would be correct. Sometimes Word can't
open Word-generated files. There have been significant problems
with Word for Windows vs Word for MacOS.

Some years its better than others. But no, there's nothing better than
LibreOffice at handling complex layouts that Word generated,
except exactly the version of Word that produced it.


-dsr-