Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2012 9:10 am Post subject: improved importing of DOCX, XLSX, PPTX if possible
If there were any way to improve importing of DOCX, XLSX, PPTX that would be great.
Simple files work fine but many with complex formatting do not import well, especially powerpoints and DOCX table formatting.
I realize this is an issue with the underlying OO or LibreOffice code and so not easy to resolve, but it's just a thought, NeoOffice 3.3 seems to work no better than 3.2 in terms of the DOCX issues. .DOC format is handled nearly to perfection.
I'm loathe to pay Microsoft for yet another buggy program so don't want to buy a native Mac version of Office. (I tried Office 2011 for Mac on a friend's machine and it crashed constantly on complex long files.)
But an increasing number of people send me DOCX files, so I wind up having copy the file to a folder that has my Windows XP virtual disk "share," open up VirtualBox, restore a Windows XP session, open an old licensed copy of Windows Word 2007 I installed in my virtual PC, save the file as .DOC, close VirtualBox to save resources, move the file back to my preferred Mac folder, and at long last can edit it in a decent stable program like NeoOffice Writer.
Sorry, but your new feature request is way too vague. It implies that you are asking for perfect or near-perfect Microsoft Office compatibility in a large undefined set of cases.
As written, your new feature request is not feasible so please rephrase your new feature request to one specific case. And I would suggest that you focus on a case that you think many other paying users will vote for.
If your rephrased case appears to be feasible to implement within our limited developer resources, then I will post how many votes we need to see to justify the time and cost to implement your rephrased feature request.
Since there has been no reply to my post, can I assume that you are having difficulty prioritizing which Microsoft Office importing and exporting limitations you would like to be looked at first?
If so, one way to rephrase your new feature request is to test if the latest version of LibreOffice improves any specific Microsoft Office import or export limitations that you see in NeoOffice. If LibreOffice does have noticeable improvements, then we could rephrase your new feature request to "backport latest LibreOffice OOXML import and export code".
In the past year we have backported quite a bit of LibreOffice's 3.3.4's OOXML import and export code so we know that that work is usually feasible and is generally doesn't require more than a few weeks of engineering time. So, if LibreOffice 3.6.x has improved handling of those file formats, then backporting may be a concrete, feasible feature that we can work on.
If you or other posters find any obvious improvements in the latest version of LibreOffice when using .docx, .xlsx, or .pptx files, please post a sample document that we can open in both NeoOffice and LibreOffice.
If several different improvements are posted, we will start trying to identify which LibreOffice code is needed to backport the improvements.
Since there has been no reply to my post, can I assume that you are having difficulty prioritizing which Microsoft Office importing and exporting limitations you would like to be looked at first?
Hi, have been busy with imminent deadlines for work, sorry.
- .DOCX tables do not important well*
- .DOCX headers and footers with embedded graphics do not import well*
- .PPTX font spacing runs over slide and generally all messed up*
* "not well" & "all messed up" = so bad I can't use the files as they are, it would be faster to re-do than to try to adjust them; but if I open the DOCX in Word and save as .DOC, or open the PPTX in Powerpoint and save as .PPT, then open in NeoOffice in .DOC or .PPT, the same files are essentially perfect.
I don't have to go the other direction so for me this only concerns DOCX and PPTX importing into NeoOffice not exporting.
I have not tried LibreOffice lately so don't know if they open better in the latest version of LO than NeoOffice, and alas don't have time to try.
In terms of priority, it would be both equally (DOCX imported tables in Writer, PPTX spacing and alignment in slides in Impress). FYI my slides are mostly plain text. It's pretty much every powerpoint I have, and every .DOCX I have with a table, so it is quite broad / vague.
Not sure how I can rephrase this by editing in the original but if you prefer me to edit it I will, will have time to check back again next week, please indicate how. It was more of a suggestion / feedback than something to have a formal vote on, so please feel free to delete the entire thread if not worded properly, I don't want to clutter up the forum.
Also, would be happy to share some sample files backchannel via Dropbox if you wish, but don't want to post publicly. Cheers!
Also, would be happy to share some sample files backchannel via Dropbox if you wish, but don't want to post publicly. Cheers!
Sorry, but due to liability issues, we don't work with non-public documents nor do we work through any channels outside of our own. If you cannot post a sample document that we can use to reproduce the problem, we understand but we cannot improve anything without specific cases to troubleshoot.
Hopefully other users can post more specific documents so we will leave this forum open to collect sample documents if anyone has any that might demonstrate the issues that vj1726a has requested improvement on.
Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 481 Location: Great Britain
Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2012 4:22 pm Post subject:
vj1726a, it seems you have access to Word and PowerPoint. Are you able to create docx and pptx sample documents displaying the problems you described, but not containing any confidential information so that you are able to share them publicly on the forum?
Also, would be happy to share some sample files backchannel via Dropbox if you wish, but don't want to post publicly. Cheers!
Sorry, but due to liability issues, we don't work with non-public documents nor do we work through any channels outside of our own. If you cannot post a sample document that we can use to reproduce the problem, we understand but we cannot improve anything without specific cases to troubleshoot.
Hopefully other users can post more specific documents so we will leave this forum open to collect sample documents if anyone has any that might demonstrate the issues that vj1726a has requested improvement on.
Patrick
Wow, that was fast! I understand, no prob. Next month (Oct.) I hope to have more time and if so will edit a couple of simple sample files that I can post publicly.
Wow, that was fast! I understand, no prob. Next month (Oct.) I hope to have more time and if so will edit a couple of simple sample files that I can post publicly.
That should work. Also, your observation that saving as .doc, .xls, or .ppt in Microsoft Office, NeoOffice handles the import process much better makes me think that when you post a sample .docx, .xlsx, or .pptx, also post the matching .doc, .xls, or .ppt.
Also, don't worry about verifying if the document opens better in LibreOffice. I think the .docx versus .doc comparison will be more useful and I can check LibreOffice's behavior myself as part of my feasibility evaluation process.
FYI. NeoOffice 3.3 Patch 5 fixed a .docx import bug that was causing tables with cells that span multiple rows or columns to be missized. More details about the bug are in this forum topic.
Also, that forum topic is a good example of how we approach fixing .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx import bugs: we try to incrementally fix specific bugs in sample files provided by users.
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