Thanks a lot for that, Virgil.
Based on the information you and Tom have provided, my workflow will go:
.ott (with paragraph and page styles) --> .odt (copy and paste .doc
content, load style from template, format, save) --> export to PDF -->
save as .doc --> send to MS computer --> Manually clean up any problems.
I think this should be fine, if a little involved. All the fonts I need
are standard MS stuff, which I have installed. I'll spare you the horror
stories about preparing a nice document in LO using DejaVU fonts and
then later opening in a new*ish* version of MS Word. ;-)
Thanks again for the time you took. Think I can get to work now.
Regards,
Ryan
On 26/08/13 23:59, Virgil Arrington wrote:
Before answering your question, I did a little test. I loaded a simple
.odt two page document in LO. It has some basic paragraph styles, and
a few outline styles with automatic numbering, along with a footer
with a page number. Basic stuff.
I then saved the document as a .doc (Word 2003). I loaded it into the
Word Starter Version that came with my Sony Laptop, and it converted
*almost* perfectly. There was only a slight deviation in my outline
numbering. LO adds more horizontal space after an automatic number,
whereas Word adds a <tab> character. When converting the document, LO
added a <tab> and adjusted the extra horizontal space, but there was
still an ever so slight difference in the lining up of the text. It
would only bother an obsessive person like me.
The page formatting and footer with page number translated perfectly.
I'm using LO 3.6.7 and I must say that it's .doc translation is
extremely good, much better than I remember from previous versions.
Virgil
-----Original Message----- From: Info/UX
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2013 6:40 PM
To: Virgil Arrington
Cc: Tom Davies ; users@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] LibreOffice paragraph styles exported
to other software/formats?
Thanks, Virgil.
My documents are similar to yours. One last question then I'll give you
guys some peace. :-) Would making a page style with page size "letter"
and with a footer be considered LO specific? I don't need anything more
intricate than that.
Thanks for the tip regarding Atlantis. I only have Linux at home so will
probably stick with LO.
Thanks again. Your replies have helped a lot.
Regards,
Ryan
On 26/08/13 23:29, Virgil Arrington wrote:
My documents tend to be *really* basic in terms of formatting.
Typically, they are either legal or academic style papers. I'm a
heavy user of paragraph styles and won't work without them.
I tend to do my entire document as an .odt and then at the end
convert to .doc as necessary. I'd use the paragraph styles, but I
would avoid LO specific methods.
Another option is a shareware word processor called Atlantis. It's a
lightweight clone of pre 2007 Word (e.g., no ribbon) with a $35.00
registration. I often use it when Word compatibility is paramount. It
does nearly everything *exactly* like Word. I honestly don't know why
MS hasn't sued them, it's that close. It doesn't support tables, but
other than that, it will handle simple formats very well and will
produce a result that Word should read fairly well.
Virgil
-----Original Message----- From: Info/UX
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2013 5:38 PM
To: Tom Davies
Cc: Virgil Arrington ; users@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] LibreOffice paragraph styles
exported to other software/formats?
Thanks, Tom, Virgil.
If I wanted to use different text body styles throughout I would
probably have made new styles and called them text body 1, 2, etc.
Luckily nothing like that is needed in this case. But I have created my
simple template with basic paragraph and page styles.
So, in trying to process the information in both of your replies, I feel
I now have two options: (1) Keep with the MS formats (.docx, but .doc if
possible) and format with minimal use of LO's special features (even so,
I'd rather use styles than format everything manually), (2) Start a
blank .odt and copy and paste my article content and load the styles
from my template and save to doc later (and maybe then to docx on a
windows machine).
Which method do you think would give the best results? The priority is
for the finished pieces to look consistent in MS Word... and also allow
other people to edit the .docs in Word with minimal quirky things
going on.
Thanks for all this advice.
Regards,
Ryan
On 26/08/13 21:18, Tom Davies wrote:
Hi :)
If you can use MS Office to do some final proof-reading then you are
unlikely to have any problems.
We have been assuming that is not possible and that would make the
final outcome uncertain. Being able to quickly scroll through
before sending it out into the world kinda eliminates that uncertainty.
If you can keep all your 'originals' in Odt format and then at the
end convert to Doc format then you should find that there are no
surprises.
Virgil seems to be talking about a very specific set of styles or
method of using styles. He is talking about changing styles (such
as changing the font of "text body") on different pages within the
same document. If you need to do that it might be worth creating
duplicates of the styles and then modifying the duplicates? I'm not
sure how to deal with that but Virgil has probably found a
work-around if needed.
I would keep copies of photos/images/art/logos near the original
Odts just in case you do run into problems. LO does have an
extremely rare intermittent bug that is difficult to pin down but
seems to be getting rarer and rarer as code clean-up goes on. You
know that you can rename files from .Odt or .DocX to .Zip and then
double-click to see the Xml coding inside along with folders for
various things such as images. Sometimes it can be a neat way to fix
problems but it's a bit risky. The Xml tags and such are very
different in the 2 formats so just renaming .Odt to .DocX might
create fairly serious problems. Stick with the "Save As ...". the
Doc format doesn't open in that way and doesn't hold images in an
image format which is another reason i suggest keeping a copy of
images nearby.
Also i have sometimes found that mysterious things happen during the
course of a Word document. So to save myself a lot of time i tend
to start with a fresh new Odt and then use
Ctrl Shift v
to paste in "unformatted text" and then apply styles (and maybe
modfied the styles after to watch the mod ripple through the
document). Occasionally i have wanted to "just do something quickly"
and then been frustrated by some weird bit of insane MS formatting
that just keeps throwing up problems until i relent and do the
"start again from scratch" approach which has then typically taken
just a few minutes even if the problem seemed intractable.
Regards from
Tom :)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Info/UX <inf...@gmx.com>
*To:* Virgil Arrington <cuyfa...@hotmail.com>
*Cc:* users@global.libreoffice.org
*Sent:* Monday, 26 August 2013, 19:23
*Subject:* Re: [libreoffice-users] LibreOffice paragraph styles
exported to other software/formats?
Thanks, Virgil.
I can probably alter any lists when I work in an MS environment at the
final stage of formatting.
Regarding page formatting — I'm wondering if I use slightly more
advanced features of LibreOffice to get my results whether it would
cause more problems when working in Word. I am trying to keep the
process relatively simple. The articles only need to have consistent
fonts and spacing and perhaps one page break for the bibliographies. I
have starting created a LibreOffice template with customised paragraph
styles and some changes to the page style. I was planning to apply this
to the .docs. As long as 90% or so of my formatting would transfer to
Word, I don't mind making some manual adjustments at that stage.
Thanks,
Ryan
On 26/08/13 13:00, Virgil Arrington wrote:
> In my experience, most paragraph styles tend to translate well to
> MS-Word formats. However, I've had problems with the alignment of
> automatic numbering and/or bullets. LO and MSW seem to align them
> differently.
>
> One bigger difference, however, is the way the two formats handle
page
> formatting. LO uses page styles to change formatting from one page to
> another, whereas Word does not. It uses section breaks to make such
> page formatting changes, and I've found discrepancies in translating
> page formatting between the two.
>
> Virgil
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Info/UX
> Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2013 1:38 PM
> To: users@global.libreoffice.org
<mailto:users@global.libreoffice.org>
> Subject: [libreoffice-users] LibreOffice paragraph styles exported to
> other software/formats?
>
> Hello,
>
> Apologies if this is a basic question. I've been given some
documents to
> format according to certain style guidelines. The files are mostly
.docx
> and .doc and must be sent off in this format. I work only with
> LibreOffice. My questions is, if I format the articles using
paragraph
> and page styles rather than just directly changing the format in the
> body of the document, will the formatting be maintained when the
> documents are opened in MS Office? I am not concerned with small
> discrepancies that can be tweaked later on, rather whether this
method
> of formatting generally transfers well. Again, sorry if it's a silly
> question.
>
> Many thanks.
> Ryan
>
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