Converting MS Office Docs to Open Office 3.2

I've never done it, but it looks like you can go to wizards from the files pull down menu on upper left, then go to document converter and choose which documents to convert, including ms word.

I'm sure macros can do it. I am just now getting started with open office macros. They have a few tutorials on the internet that cause confusion by including all sorts of advanced stuff (UNO services) without any comments or supporting information. It's amazing how some Linux topics can be documented as bad or worse than M$ or IBM documentation.

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/BASIC_Guide/Program_Overview is a rare find in that it first explains open office Basic in a VERY GOOD way. What you need to know is there and ORGANIZED WELL. They do not include extra mumbo jumbo that is either there to fill space or just because it came along with the clipboard copy.

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=57578 is a forum thread that has some useful macro code that will work with all images or all documents in a directory. The code suffers from very few comments and numerous uncommented lines that are copied from somewhere and don't do anything useful for the beginner trying to learn to code open office macros. (I was pretty good at M$ Office macros). But, with all its faults it does show the power of the macros.

If you wish to you could probably write your own macro to do what you want by spending a hour or two with the above information.

Also, if you don't get any other suggestions you might be able to find key words in the above links to help you google for a macro that already does what you want. Your request seems like one that should already have a macro posted for it somewhere out there in the big, wide Internet.

Bruce

There may be some useful links in this thread about "batch document conversion" although most of the comments are about other formats, the general tools and techniques should be there - comment #5 looks promising.

Sorry

This refers to Ubuntu Forums not to Openoffice

Open Writer.

Help or F1

Microsoft Documents

Converting all documents of a folder

Have a fine day

What format are you trying to go to?

you can just keep working in 2003 doc format

the wiki is exceptional, the forum is full of very knowledgeable & helpful members

Here's some

So, is there an easy way to convert all of the docs over, without doing them individually?

1. Copy all the documents to be converted to a single folder.

2. Click on the first file in the list.

3. Holding the shift key, click on the last file in the list. This will select all the files.

4. Right click any file in the selection and from the menu select "open with..."

5. Select Open Office writer. This should open the selected files as Open Office files.

6. Save the files from Open office in the format of your choice or export them as PDF files.

7. When the transform is successful, delete the orignal MS .DOC files.

I would like to thank everyone for all of the advice and guidance.

It looks like it will take awhile and some docs just do not wanted to be converted, but save themselves in RTF aas they were orginally sent to me (they have been few so far; maybe if they had been converted to word first, then they would convert to ODF).

The excel docs with macros needed security adjustments (Open Office seems a lot stricter with the rules here than MS Office)

Thanks again, and if I find any other quirks, I will post them.

Respectfully,