On Dec 11, 2008, at 9:48 AM, Frank Capitanio wrote:
I have a question but I can't find the answers on the forum. I really love open office, and this is the first time I've had a problem with it. I wrote a book on an old mac laptop. The file is saved as a .doc file. It is 337 pages and 139,000 words. I just bought a macbook pro and downloaded the open office software. When I transferred the file onto the new computer, I got a file length of 291 pages and 141,000 words! What is going on??? I checked all the document formats and they're the same on both computers: same margins, header/footers, line spacing, font size, etc. How is it that I "lost" almost forty pages, but somehow gained 2,000 words? I did notice that in the old program, when the document is at 1" margins, less words fit on a line than in the new program with the same size margins - something that could explain the smaller amount of pages in the new document. It still doesn't explain the word count gain, though.

Anyway, I'm confused and just wondering if I lost any information or if this is a usual occurrence. Thanks so much for your time and effort. You do have a great product and you give a great service to those who depend on word processing but don't have the resources to pay for Word. Thanks again!


Since you have changed computers, the first thing that comes to mind is the fonts, which are installed on a per-system basis, not per- application. So if you asked for (say) Palatino and you had Palatino on the old computer and you don't have Palatino on the new one, then OOo might be substituting, say, Times New Roman, giving you a radically different page count, since Times New Roman letters are generally narrower than Palatino letters of the same point size.

The difference in word count probably depends on a difference in how "word count" is defined in the two programs. Is a number a word? Do you count the page headings? Etc., etc....

--
John W Kennedy
"The grand art mastered the thudding hammer of Thor
And the heart of our lord Taliessin determined the war."
  -- Charles Williams.  "Mount Badon"




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