Is LibreOffice Writer able to read properly Ms Office Word docx Files?

Question

Is LibreOffice Writer able to read properly Ms Office Word docx Files?

I think it can't and users should be aware of it!

I tried to open many documents .docx created with Ms Office 2007 and appeared modified/transformed when I tried to open them with LibreOffice.

Can I do anything about it?

Answer 1

Yes it can... Most of the times with out issues.

LibreOffice supports by default several formats including the ones used by Microsoft Office, including the Office Open XML specification from .docx, .pptx and .xlsx files.

That will not mean that everything will look exactly the same when you open a file in MS Office 2007 and in LibreOffice. To tell the truth not all files created in MS Office 2007 will open the same even in Ms Office 2010, the opposite is also true.

You should be aware that Office XML specifications were created by Microsoft and that nuances can be seen using different versions of the editor that you are using. That will also be true even with Microsoft software.

Just don't expect that everything will be the same all the times. Things like missing fonts and weird formatting in the original document will cause massive issues while trying to open it in LibreOffice. Open XML formats sucks balls. End of story.

As an option you can however run Ms Office in Ubuntu easily. Nothing is impossible. Just buy a MS Office license, run the installer with Wine and you can do all the things you do in Windows using MS Office 2007 under Ubuntu.

Answer 2

I had this problem as well (it doesn't help that MS keeps changing their formats) :(

Hot Tip

One solution I found that seemed to work is to ask people I am working on documents with to simply save it in an older doc version. It seems to guarantee that I could see the document in the original format and the people I was collaborating with were able to properly open my documents properly (previously saving LibreOffice in docx was preventing them from doing that).

Hope that helps some folks :)

** Update: It appears as though the latest release of Open Office has better DocX support (only available in the latest version of Ubuntu 12 though)

Answer 3

Another factor that often is overlooked when compatibility is discussed is that documents created in MS Office in Windows often uses MS fonts that is not available in Linux. An exchanged font makes documents look different and the layout will get lost. This can partly be fixed by using exactly the same fonts in MS Office and LibreOffice.

Answer 4

Not really, I cant use with any Documents that my business creates in Office 2007/10 - the formatting is all over the place.

Really should not be touted as a "full office suite compatible with MS office - it really isn't and in no way should it be used for businesses.

Answer 5

I agree that it has some basic compatibility but as people have said here, the ususal workflow where a Windows/Office user sends you a docx which you edit and send back is fundamentally unfeasible with LibreOffice, and the main reason I still need to boot into Windows. Any file with tables or advanced formatting will tend to break.

I can't yet verify if the new/beta version does handle these better but at the moment I would still consider it risky

Answer 6

Seems there is a new beta update with DOCX improvements.
A List of Changes is available.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/libreoffice-prereleases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade