Sharing Files Between Writer and Word

With the options for file sharing enabled, you can generally exchange text documents with few problems. The text itself usually translates with only minor problems. The difficulties are likely to be caused by inserted objects or page-level formatting.

Character and paragraph formatting, whether set manually or with styles, usually transfer easily. Provided that the fonts used are available to both programs, characteristics such as font size, effects, and positioning are trouble-free. Even rotation of characters and changes in font width transfer without difficulty. The same is true of basic paragraph characteristics, such as line spacing and tabs. OOo's list styles are not supported in Microsoft Word, but paragraphs associated with a list style in Writer use the same type of list in Word.

The only difficulties with paragraphs show up when you use OOo features unsupported by Microsoft Word, such as custom hyphenation, page breaks, and last lines of justified paragraphs. Word drops these items in favor of its default settings. The result may be minor differences in line and page breaksusually amounting to no more than a single additional line, if that.

Numbered and bulleted lists were a conversion problem in earlier versions of OpenOffice.org. The main reason was that Writer and Word used different default fonts for bulleted lists. In OOo 2, these problems are greatly alleviated. Even bullets made with special characters and advanced options, such as text before or after a bullet, now transfer cleanly. Only bullets made from graphics, such as the ones in the OOo gallery, do not export to Microsoft Word.

A bulleted list that didn't transfer correctly.

The greatest problem with lists seems to be the use of Tools > Outline Numbering, which prevents the saving of a file in Microsoft Word format. If you are making a file you expect to share with Microsoft Office users, you should avoid Outline Numbering.

Many fields are trouble-free, including page numbers, cross-references, and tables of contents. In fact, even custom table-of-contents entries, such as ones with the page number first, open successfully in Microsoft Word. A few fields, including those based on file attributes (such as word count) are converted to text. This can cause problems if the file is being passed back and forth for revision. Fields that do not work at all include all of those for conditional text, such as hidden text and hidden paragraphs. Hidden text simply disappears in Microsoft Word, while hidden paragraphs are revealed. Fields as a whole do not import or export well, probably because they are so bound up in the logic of one program that they have no equivalent in the other.

Inserted objects produce mixed results when sharing files. Many common objects transfer without problems. Bookmarks and hyperlinks transfer successfully unless attached to a frame. So do notes and revision changes. Other objects may not do as well. The settings for graphicsincluding size, anchor, and alignmentjump the gap smoothly except when Align as Character is set in Writer, in which case the graphic simply does not appear in Word.

Complex table and border settings generally transfer smoothly, but a nested table does not survive when the file is opened in Word. Similarly, simple shapes made with the drawing tools carry over, but callouts or complicated diagrams sometimes suffer minor spacing problems. Footnotes are transferred but generally cause repagination, so end notes seem a better alternative for a shared document.

A few objects do not convert at all, including animations and embedded OOo files. And with OOo (or any other program) running on GNU/Linux, OLE objects in a Microsoft Office document do not convert either, becausedespite the listing for OLE Objects under Insert > Objectthe operating system does not support them.

Other items that do not transfer successfully are mostly concerned with page layout:

• Margins for page styles are maintained, but the page styles themselves are lost. So are all the headers and footers except the first ones, along with borders or shadows given to them.

• Text frames are transferred, but without most of their settings.

• Sections fail even more seriously, being treated as page break markers, and they drop password protection and hidden settings.

• Both frames and sections with multiple columns often display only the first few lines.

• Master documents can be neither imported nor exported.

Given that Microsoft Word has no sense of the typographic page, these problems are to be expected.