MS Word docs to OpenOffice: a summary

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

The other week, I asked list members for some complex MS Word documents, 
so that I could do a thorough testing of how OpenOffice handled them. 
Many people responded, and I test about a dozen documents, ranging from 
30 to 960 pages, and from simple text documents to ones full of tables, 
equations, and other complex elements. Here are the results:

In general, the conversion was very good. General text conversion was 
next to flawless, including in comments and footnotes. Even equations 
and tables were translated without any problems. Problems included:

- Bullets consistently had extra indentation unless they were created 
using fields.
- When several enumerated lists and bullet lists appeared together, the 
different lists sometimes merged together unless they were created using 
fields.
- Secondary text frames were not always converted properly

However, if I first checked that fonts in the document were available 
for both MS Word and OpenOffice, and applied an OpenOffice template 
identical to the MS Word document being translated, the second and third 
problem disappeared.

As might be expected, transfer could be slow for complex documents. The 
960 page document took almost four minutes to open in OpenOffice.

When I saved the translated documents in OpenOffice format, the saving 
was immediate. Open Office documents with text only, or with linked 
graphics were 37-46% the size of the same documents in MS Word format. 
If graphics were embedded, then Open Office documents were about 50-63% 
the size of their MS Word equivalents. With documents with tables every 
couple of pages, or with one or two equations on every page, the 
OpenOffice docs were 70-90% the size of their MS Word equivalents. 
Unsurprisingly, these differences in size had a noticeable effect on 
opening documents, jumping between pages, and updating.

My thanks to Kevin Christy, Anna Marie Pluhar, Lisa Bronson, Jonathan 
West, John Gilger, Margaret Beilby and anyone else whose name I've 
forgotten for their willingness to send me documents to test. I promise 
that all documents, both original and OpenOffice versions, will be 
shortly destroyed.

--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

"Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If Church and Court reply,
Then give them both the lie."
- Sir Walter Raleigh, "The Lie"




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