converting from Word 2004 to OO Writer 3.3.

rmkelly · Newbie Joined: 15 May 2012 Posts: 4 Location: USA

I have a long but fairly simple Word doc with only 2 tables, but many footnotes; it will be a book. Under Word the switching from footnotes to endnotes (depending on what was needed for draft and printing, chapters, etc.) was seamless. I'm wondering what the standard practice is to be sure that I continue this ongoing project with a clean slate in OO. I have heard that Word has a habit of bringing over awkward/unsightly code.

It is better to simply convert to OO Writer, then save as ODT and continue on adding front matter, back matter, and so on? Or is it better to copy/paste the entire document, including footnotes and tables, into a fresh template? And, should that be text only? RTF? Or something else?

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I have not found much info on this, which surprises me; there must be many thousands of former Word docs that now live on as OO docs; I'm wondering how this is done, and what the track record is.

T.I.A.
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floris_v · Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 5:50 am Post subject:

A lot works by experimenting. First open the doc file in Writer ans see how it converts. Save as odt, then open the odt and copy/paste that to a new document (that may remove some remaining rubbish). If that doesn't work, and you still have Word, open the file in Word and copy it to Writer in parts. Don't use the RTF format - it's badly supported by OOo, so you're sure to lose a lot that way.
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rmkelly · Newbie Joined: 15 May 2012 Posts: 4 Location: USA

Thanks Floris,

makes sense. I should perhaps have mentioned I'm on a mac running Lion. I don't have Word on this new machine but I can still go back to the old and export a few files as a backup in addition to the conversions I have done, following your advice.
I'm thinking if I need the tables and footnotes to come over, I must use some form of formatting, as opposed to plain text.
But for sure, I will avoid RTF.
thanks again, I appreciate your taking the time!

Bob
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