Re: [libreoffice-users] LibreOffice paragraph styles exported to other software/formats?

Hi :)
iow.  Both ways are good.  Pick one.  Use it.  (or modify one)

Neither is perfect because DocX and even Doc is not perfect.  Odt usage is on the rise and 
beginning to be the best choice for long-term storage.  Hopefully it will 'soon' become the best 
choice for active collaboration too.  

Until then we are at the mercy of a single profit-making company that is beginning to panic about 
the sudden rise of mobile computing.  They need to sell more of what people already have.  How are 
they going to convince people to keep buying stuff they don't really rely on so much  anymore?  

Regards from 
Tom :)  




________________________________
 From: Info/UX <infoux@gmx.com>
To: Tom Davies <tomdavies04@yahoo.co.uk> 
Cc: Virgil Arrington <cuyfalls@hotmail.com>; "users@global.libreoffice.org" 
<users@global.libreoffice.org> 
Sent: Monday, 26 August 2013, 22:38
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] LibreOffice paragraph styles exported to other software/formats?
 


Thanks, Tom, Virgil.

If I wanted to use different text body styles throughout I would
    probably have made new styles and called them text body 1, 2, etc.
    Luckily nothing like that is needed in this case. But I have created
    my simple template with basic paragraph and page styles.

So, in trying to process the information in both of your replies, I
    feel I now have two options: (1) Keep with the MS formats (.docx,
    but .doc if possible) and format with minimal use of LO's special
    features (even so, I'd rather use styles than format everything
    manually), (2) Start a blank .odt and copy and paste my article
    content and load the styles from my template and save to doc later
    (and maybe then to docx on a windows machine).

Which method do you think would give the best results? The priority
    is for the finished pieces to look consistent in MS Word... and also
    allow other people to edit the .docs in Word with minimal quirky
    things going on.

Thanks for all this advice.

Regards,
Ryan 


On 26/08/13 21:18, Tom Davies wrote:

Hi :)
> If you can use MS Office to do some final proof-reading then you
        are unlikely to have any problems.  
> We have been assuming that is not possible and that would make
        the final outcome uncertain.  Being able to quickly scroll
        through before sending it out into the world kinda eliminates
        that uncertainty.  
> If you can keep all your 'originals' in Odt format and then at
        the end convert to Doc format then you should find that there
        are no surprises.  
> Virgil seems to be talking about a very specific set of styles
        or method of using styles.  He is talking about changing styles
        (such as changing the font of "text body") on different pages
        within the same document.  If you need to do that it might be
        worth creating duplicates of the styles and then modifying the
        duplicates?  I'm not sure how to deal with that but Virgil has
        probably found a work-around if needed.  
> I would keep copies of photos/images/art/logos near the original
        Odts just in case you do run into problems.  LO does have an
        extremely rare intermittent bug that is difficult to pin down
        but seems to be getting rarer and rarer as code clean-up goes
        on.  You know that you can rename files from .Odt or .DocX to
        .Zip and then double-click to see the Xml coding inside along
        with folders for various things such as images.  Sometimes it
        can be a neat way to fix problems but it's a bit risky.  The Xml
        tags and such are very different in the 2 formats so just
        renaming .Odt to .DocX might create fairly serious problems. 
        Stick with the "Save As ...".  the Doc format doesn't open in
        that way and doesn't hold images in an image format which is
        another reason i suggest keeping a copy of images nearby.  
> Also i have sometimes found that mysterious things happen during
        the course of a Word document.  So to save myself a lot of time
        i tend to start with a fresh new Odt and then use 
> Ctrl Shift v
> to paste in "unformatted text" and then apply styles (and maybe
        modfied the styles after to watch the mod ripple through the
        document).  Occasionally i have wanted to "just do something
        quickly" and then been frustrated by some weird bit of insane MS
        formatting that just keeps throwing up problems until i relent
        and do the "start again from scratch" approach which has then
        typically taken just a few minutes even if the problem seemed
        intractable.  
> Regards from 
> Tom :)  
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Info/UX <infoux@gmx.com>
> To: Virgil Arrington <cuyfalls@hotmail.com> 
> Cc: users@global.libreoffice.org 
> Sent: Monday, 26 August 2013, 19:23
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] LibreOffice paragraph styles exported to other software/formats?
>
>
> Thanks, Virgil.
>
> I can probably alter any lists when I work in an MS
              environment at the 
> final stage of formatting.
>
> Regarding page formatting — I'm wondering if I use
              slightly more 
> advanced features of LibreOffice to get my results whether
              it would 
> cause more problems when working in Word. I am trying to
              keep the 
> process relatively simple. The articles only need to have
              consistent 
> fonts and spacing and perhaps one page break for the
              bibliographies. I 
> have starting created a LibreOffice template with
              customised paragraph 
> styles and some changes to the page style. I was planning
              to apply this 
> to the .docs. As long as 90% or so of my formatting would
              transfer to 
> Word, I don't mind making some manual adjustments at that
              stage.
> Thanks,
> Ryan
>
> On 26/08/13 13:00, Virgil Arrington wrote:
> > In my experience, most paragraph styles tend to
              translate well to 
> > MS-Word formats. However, I've had problems with the
              alignment of 
> > automatic numbering and/or bullets. LO and MSW seem
              to align them 
> > differently.
> >
> > One bigger difference, however, is the way the two
              formats handle page 
> > formatting. LO uses page styles to change formatting
              from one page to 
> > another, whereas Word does not. It uses section
              breaks to make such 
> > page formatting changes, and I've found discrepancies
              in translating 
> > page formatting between the two.
> >
> > Virgil
> >
> > -----Original Message----- From: Info/UX
> > Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2013 1:38 PM
> > To: users@global.libreoffice.org
> > Subject: [libreoffice-users] LibreOffice paragraph
              styles exported to 
> > other software/formats?
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > Apologies if this is a basic question. I've been
              given some documents to
> > format according to certain style guidelines. The
              files are mostly .docx
> > and .doc and must be sent off in this format. I work
              only with
> > LibreOffice. My questions is, if I format the
              articles using paragraph
> > and page styles rather than just directly changing
              the format in the
> > body of the document, will the formatting be
              maintained when the
> > documents are opened in MS Office? I am not concerned
              with small
> > discrepancies that can be tweaked later on, rather
              whether this method
> > of formatting generally transfers well. Again, sorry
              if it's a silly
> > question.
> >
> > Many thanks.
> > Ryan
>
>
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