Open Office vs Word

[expat]

OK, I installed Parallels and then Windows and then Word. Then I looked at my CV as written in OOO. It looked OK.

It's the same copy of Word as on the Windows machine, but on that machine the table contents don't display; on Windows under parallels they do.

Crap.

[expat]

The Windows installation is not going smoothly. Now I remember why I don't use it any more.

[expat]

I always send mine as RTF anyway - no need for macros on a CV.

I once had an agent complaining that he could only open ".doc files for Word" - I tried to explain that Word could read RTF, but he wasn't having it. So I just renamed the file to have a .doc extension instead of .rtf (Word doesn't care about the extension, it determines the format by examining the file contents) and sent it again. He phoned me to let me know that he could open it now it was "in the right format"

Ha! Yes, that's how I should do it. RTF is saed just fine, and I have sent an RTF, but hadn't yet tried renaming it to .DOC.

Indeed the whole point is that I can't afford to trip up idiotic pimps, since I have sold my soul to them.

The OOO-saved "Word-format" doc, when opened in Word, does not show the text (for all but the last row of a table). If I select it, it becomes visible even after not selected, but it disappears again if I scroll off the screen; and it does NOT print.


Meanwhile, I am trialling Parallels with an old Windows and Word. I wasn't going to have any MS stuff on this Mac, but since I need to work, pimps control my work, and the muppets can't handle anything but a Word Doc, I have to do it.

[NickFitz]

You could even use a simpler format like RTF, that way you can be fairly sure copy-paste and different software won't break it.

I always send mine as RTF anyway - no need for macros on a CV.

I once had an agent complaining that he could only open ".doc files for Word" - I tried to explain that Word could read RTF, but he wasn't having it. So I just renamed the file to have a .doc extension instead of .rtf (Word doesn't care about the extension, it determines the format by examining the file contents) and sent it again. He phoned me to let me know that he could open it now it was "in the right format"

[d000hg]

You could even use a simpler format like RTF, that way you can be fairly sure copy-paste and different software won't break it.

[cojak]

Just a point, but if your styles and tables are giving OOo then the might be giving agents problems.

We know they just use cut and paste but if they're spending more than a nano second on it it's likely that they'll c0ck it up on you... .

I cleaned mine up after OOo showed up anomalies in it and now it looks better in both Word and OOo.

[Grinder]

Tables look simple but have many parameters, cell padding, borders, paragraphs, styles, etc. I'd be tempted (if you are seeing problems) to rework it with tabs which have been around since the days of the typewriter.

My CV looks different in OO - if fact it revealed some text which I removed several versions previously in Word - blank bullets and allsorts. I simplified it and don't get these problems any more.

[d000hg]

My experience is OO/MSWord don't play together well as soon as you use styles, if I manually control the type-face and font settings for each piece of text rather than using styles it tends to work a lot better.

[NickFitz]

How does it print? If printing is OK then it doesn't matter if you can't see the text - after all, you know what you wrote

FWIW, my CV also shows a few oddities in OOo, relating to the indents on certain styles I defined.

My plan (next time I need to update my CV) is to redo the whole thing from scratch on OOo, then see how it comes out in Word: I suspect it may be better going that way than it is importing stuff.

[expat]

I'm using Open Office Mac, but when I open a doc (my CV so it matters!) in MS Word it has problems. I have formatted it with lots of tables, but in Word, in all but the last row of each table the text is invisible. When I select it, it becomes visible, and remains visible even after it is not selected any more.

What the F is that?

I know that some will say, don't use Open Office; but let me ask it as a purely Word question then: how can it show text as invisible only until it has been selected?

PS a previous version. older by only 2 days, opens OK in Word. So I guess it is an Open Office question: what have I done recently, that I don't know I have done, that doesn't change how it looks in Open Office but does change how it looks in Word?