If anyone knows this word processor, Open Office, can you please help me. I was using Open Office to write a short story for my novel on my laptop, then I decided to continue to write it on a Macintosh computer at school, which only use the latest Microsoft Word. After I left class, I went back on my laptop to continue writing for short, but my short got a reading error on Open Office. It won't open up my document to edit it, and I don't have an extra copy of my work. Do anyone know how to fix this problem? It's frustrating when you work on a story and you now have to start all over.
Open Office Error Read
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Your best bet might be to save it again on your school computer, in a variety of formats right down to plain text.
If you don't have a version which will open in any word processor any more, try opening it in a basic plain text editor such as Notepad. There will be vast amounts of junk in there, but you should be able to see and extract the text.
If you don't have a version which will open in any word processor any more, try opening it in a basic plain text editor such as Notepad. There will be vast amounts of junk in there, but you should be able to see and extract the text.
Download the lastest version of OO that will open a .docx file.
Save future documents in .rtf format
Save future documents in .rtf format
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You could also try WPS office. If that doesn't work, you could try opening it in Google docs.
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Go to LibreOffice. It's not only free, it is OpenOffice, but with several better features, including the ability to open pretty much anything you throw at it.
Thank you. I downloaded LibreOffice and now it works. I hope it won't happen again if I write my short on a Macintosh computer.
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I write exclusively on a Mac and I only have issues if I save as a .docx (the new default format for Word) and someone is using a program that only reads .doc files (i.e., an older program that predates Microsoft's introduction of the docx format).
Basically, it's not the Mac, it's a Word file compatibility issue. If you're not sure what will read what, save as .doc or .rtf.
If you're writing on multiple computers, you could look at google docs. With that you aren't saving anything locally, but rather connecting to a server and writing online, so you can access it from any device- so long as you have an internet connection, and you will never have a compatibility issue. It automatically saves every word you type and you can restore older versions of your manuscript. I write on my tablet, then open my pc and make some changes, then go to the shops, have a thought and quickly tap it out on my phone, and everything is perfectly synced without having to transfer anything.
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True. I was on holiday recently and there wasn't enough cell reception to access the internet, so the offline editing was a lifesaver! You just need to make sure you mark the files for offline use before hand so that it can upload the latest version to your device.
The problem isn't related to Macintosh versus PC (versus Linux), it's that you saved it in the latest Microsoft Word .docx format. If you're going to write to and edit the same document on different computers, you should do as jimmy said, use a more "standard" format such as .rtf (Any version of Word will save to and read it, as well as Open Office, LibreOffice and WordPad), or (if you can live without the fancy formatting) even plain text format ".txt" which anything can read.
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Don't forget .doc, if you want MS Word. Every version of MS Word (for now) opens the older .doc format, and it's even more widely accessible by third party software.