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Posted by Chris Thompson
Oct 16, 2007 at 04:21 PM
Graham, you may wish to experiment with more recent versions of OpenOffice. I’ve actually found OpenOffice to be more compatible with some older Word documents than Office 2007. I don’t use either product any more, but I keep OpenOffice around for opening old documents. Even for Office 2007 users, it’s worth keeping around for those times when you have compatibility problems with legacy Office documents.
—Chris
Graham Rhind wrote:
>OpenOffice cannot open large documents that even
>older versions of Word has no problems with, and Ability had to admit to me that their
>suite wasn’t as compatible with MS Office as they claimed after I sent them bug after
>diffference after bug after failure.
>
>I won’t even be trying this one, I’m afraid
>...
>
>Graham
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Oct 16, 2007 at 05:43 PM
Chris,
What office suite do you use?
Steve Z.
Chris Thompson wrote:
>Graham, you may wish to experiment with more recent versions of OpenOffice. I’ve
>actually found OpenOffice to be more compatible with some older Word documents than
>Office 2007. I don’t use either product any more, but I keep OpenOffice around for
>opening old documents. Even for Office 2007 users, it’s worth keeping around for
>those times when you have compatibility problems with legacy Office documents.
>
>—
>Chris
>
>
>Graham Rhind wrote:
>>OpenOffice cannot open large documents that even
>
>>older versions of Word has no problems with, and Ability had to admit to me that their
>
>>suite wasn’t as compatible with MS Office as they claimed after I sent them bug after
>
>>diffference after bug after failure.
>>
>>I won’t even be trying this one, I’m
>afraid
>>...
>>
>>Graham
>
Posted by Cassius
Oct 16, 2007 at 07:47 PM
Graham Rhind wrote:
“... but I have large and complicated documents and free or low-priced alternatives to MS Office just can’t manage them. ...”
Graham,
Do you really use`a single Word file for large and complicated documents? From my personal experience and that of some colleagues, I’d be terrified that a corruption in one part of the file would damage the entire document.
-c
Posted by Graham Rhind
Oct 16, 2007 at 08:20 PM
Cassius wrote:
>Graham Rhind wrote:
>”... but I have large and complicated documents and free or
>low-priced alternatives to MS Office just can’t manage them. ...”
>
>Graham,
>
>Do you
>really use`a single Word file for large and complicated documents? From my personal
>experience and that of some colleagues, I’d be terrified that a corruption in one part
>of the file would damage the entire document.
>
>-c
Absolutely. Before I moved it to Whizfolders my second book was in a single Word document - 1100 pages. I admit that at that point Word was straining and slowing significantly, which is why I cut into into chunks and put it into Whizfolders. That Word file could not be opened in any other word processor I ever tried - they fell over due to the size of the document.
I’ve never had a single corrupted Word document, but naturally I have a strict and comprehensive backup routine, so even if I did have I would never lose more than 1 day’s work.
If my Whizfolder’s files now became corrupted I would have exactly the same problem. Again, I rely on my backup for that contingency - but Whizfolders has also proved very stable.
Graham
Posted by Chris Thompson
Oct 17, 2007 at 01:32 AM
Wow! I can’t imagine writing a 1100 page book in Word. For documents of that length, I’d encourage you to investigate tools specifically designed for that kind of job, such as LaTeX, FrameMaker, DocBook, or any of the variety of SGML tools. Not just for speed and usability reasons, but also because long documents tend to have advanced needs (e.g. multiple tables of contents, a main table of contents and then tables of contents by chapter, multiple appendices, heavy cross-referencing, cross-referencing between footnotes, etc.), and in my experience Word tends not to be reliable when using those features in combination, even for documents in the 30-50 page range. Most of the long document-oriented tools tend to be bulletproof in comparison. There’s something to be said for consistently reliable, less aggravating tools.
—Chris
Graham Rhind wrote:
>Absolutely. Before I moved it to Whizfolders my second book was in
>a single Word document - 1100 pages. I admit that at that point Word was straining and
>slowing significantly, which is why I cut into into chunks and put it into
>Whizfolders. That Word file could not be opened in any other word processor I ever
>tried - they fell over due to the size of the document.