[PLUG] Best File Format for OOo Writer <=> MS Word Collaboration?

jgw at sdf.org jgw at sdf.org
Wed Feb 1 17:03:10 UTC 2012


Greetings PLUGers,
I'm trying to help out a first-time author using OOo Writer 3.2.0 on Ubuntu
10.4 who needs to collaborate with a book editor using MS Word, probably
the 2007 version on Windows 7.  Ideally, the book editor would be using
the "Record Changes" feature in Word, then forwarding it back for the author
to run "Edit>Accept or Reject Changes" on. Probably several rounds of this
sort of thing on an approx. 400 page book.  Alternately, it appears both
programs can also merge differences via the "Compare Files" feature which
avoids having to deal with externally-generated "diffs" as with "Record
Changes".

Anyways, my simple single page tests using the .rtf format were a mixed
bag, sometimes resulting in file corruption.  The .doc format seems to be
more robust over several rounds of changes.  However, there are several
Word versions available under "File>Save As>File Type" and I'm wondering
which is most likely to be best for this project?

OOo "Save As>File Type" choices:

MS Word 6.0 (.doc)
MS Word 95 (.doc)
MS Word 97/2000/XP (.doc)
MS Word 2003 (.xml)
MS Word 2007 (.docx)  ## I think this is read-only so a non-starter

I've not tested OpenDocument Text (.fodt) or DocBook (.xml).

I am aware of the ODF Converter module for MS Office however it didn't
perform well in my tests which featured frequent MS Word (earlier 2000
version) crashes whenever an .odt file was opened.

My guess is MS Word 97/2000/XP is the best candidate but I'd like to get
some real-world feedback before committing.

Regards,

Jeff W




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