Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 9:58 pm Post subject: Opening documents with .doc suffix
Hello Again,
I've been away for a while but am back. It's a long story so I'll skip it. This is a repost of a topic from back in early October ("Opening word perfect files") to which "sardisson" responded but then things happened and I never did resolve the problem. It has a slightly different twist to it now but is pretty much the same, to wit.
I recently imported a file with several documents created on a PC using Windows XP. When I try to open them in NeoJ I get the ASCII window. I've tried using several of the "character sets" but get only gibberish (like ###########) for several lines when I press the OK button. [Specifically I've tried Unicode; Unicode (UTF7)&(UTF8); Western Europe (ASCII/US)&(DOS/OS2/437/US)] Other documents w/o table formating from the same file opened just fine.
What does a guy have to do to be able to use these documents. The current suffix attached to them is the Word suffix .doc or .DOC. I imported them using NeoJ. They are essentially business form templates that used tables as the basic formating instrument. Does this complicate matters somehow ?
Any Ideas ?
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 11:05 pm Post subject:
Hmm...are you sure they are Word files? Word has the ".doc" suffix. If somehow the files were actually created with a different word processor and someone put the ".doc" on them you might want to try to remove the suffix to let OOo/Neo try to autodetect the format.
Also, are the files perhaps encrypted from within Word? OOo 1.x/Neo can't open up documents that were password protected from within Office, IIRC. If you resave such documents without password protection you should have better success opening them.
Or they could be Word formats that OpenOffice.org's filters can't read (Mac Word 5 and below, and early versions of WinWord/Word for DOS)--see NeoOffice File Formats for more details on which Word versions are supported.
(In fact, the only reason OOo can read *any* Mac Word formats is because beginning with Word 6/Word 95, the file formats became cross-platform; the only Mac-native file formats OOo can read are PICT and WordPerfect for Mac, the latter because of the work of a third party, not Sun/OOo).
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: Nov 21, 2005 Posts: 1285 Location: Witless Protection Program
Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 1:47 am Post subject:
I have have several problems with files having the ".doc" suffix but not being MS Word files. 1) Sometimes they are old WordPerfect files with .doc instead of .wps, or 2) have had the suffix added by someone.
Maybe they were created with some 3) Forms application and just have .DOC added
Can you try viewing the files as plain text or ASCII. I use something like Notepad on the PC or TextWrangler on the Mac.
Each document file has some text codes at the very beginning of the file that gives some clue what type of file and/or what program created the file. I would suggest that you try that to see what the files really are.
OPENSTEP wrote:
Hmm...are you sure they are Word files? Word has the ".doc" suffix. If somehow the files were actually created with a different word processor and someone put the ".doc" on them you might want to try to remove the suffix to let OOo/Neo try to autodetect the format.
something else you may want to try is to see if they open in TextEdit. then you can at least get the data and put it into neo. (also, it would check the extension, since Text Edit can open word .docs)
Good point Jake. People either seem to either love or hate TextEdit. IMO, a very powerful app, since Panther at least, but some still don't think it is "convenient enough" yet and don't really want to get used to using it.
Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2005 3:30 pm Post subject: Opening documents with .doc suffix
Thanks all for your responses,
To begin with ,I am sure the documents were if not created, modified and saved using Word XP 2000 without encription. Next I tried to open the file using text edit as proposed by Jake but that was not successfull.
Here's more info if your still willing to help me out here. [In case I should have told you this stuff to begin with, please forgive me for I know not what I'm doing with this stuff.] The documents in question are prefixed with ~$ . Secondly, when I imported the file on the PC, I created a Zip file of them to have as backup before I modified them. When I attempt to open the documents in this file using nOJ, I get the text but no formating i.e. no table. [The suffix attached to the documents in this file is WP] I attempted to "unwrap" them but couldn't manage that either. If nothing else, if I can manage to unwrap documents out of this file I can redo the modifications.
Apologies if I seem slow to respond, other responsibities keep me away from the computer much of the week. Please be assured your help is appreciated. Thanks tml
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Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2005 7:00 pm Post subject: Re: Opening documents with .doc suffix
Anonymous wrote:
Thanks all for your responses,
To begin with ,I am sure the documents were if not created, modified and saved using Word XP 2000 without encription. Next I tried to open the file using text edit as proposed by Jake but that was not successfull.
Here's more info if your still willing to help me out here. [In case I should have told you this stuff to begin with, please forgive me for I know not what I'm doing with this stuff.] The documents in question are prefixed with ~$.
These files are useless and are used only as placeholder files. They only hold the fact that the base file is opened and being worked on by Word (if you really want to know, if you attempt to open a file a second time, these files tell Word to post the message "Do you want to revert to the saved <file name>?" Yes/No/Cancel dialog box.) When you attempt to open them using NeoOffice, they do not have the usual data at the beginning of the file which tells the filter portion of the program to use the Word Import filter and then end up looking like garbage on the screen.
Anon. wrote:
Secondly, when I imported the file on the PC, I created a Zip file of them to have as backup before I modified them. When I attempt to open the documents in this file using nOJ, I get the text but no formating i.e. no table. [The suffix attached to the documents in this file is WP] I attempted to "unwrap" them but couldn't manage that either. If nothing else, if I can manage to unwrap documents out of this file I can redo the modifications.
You can put the .zip file in the Trash. You need to get and compress (.zip) the 'real' Word documents. This will be file names without the ~$ and end in .doc. If you open a Word document in a text editor, you will be able to read most if not all of the text in the document. It may have special characters in between your text which may make some characters unreadable.
Anon. wrote:
Apologies if I seem slow to respond, other responsibities keep me away from the computer much of the week. Please be assured your help is appreciated.
We realize that not everyone lives, breathes and talks constantly about computers and that most (if not all) of us have 'real' lives.
Anon. wrote:
Thanks tml
You are welcome. Try and find those .doc files and see what happens when you attempt to read them using NeoOffice.
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