Open Office document unreadable

Jake'sGran

I will apologise first because I have asked this before. I did do a search in this forum but did not get anywhere probably because my search
words were not accurate enough.

I do not have Word so my letter was typed in Open Office. When saved then opened in Notepad it is indecipherable. Will someone tell me again how to make it readable and what I should have done to start with? This time I will keep the instructions in the saved documents.

TonyMMM

Notepad can only handle very basic text files ....yours will be saved in Open Office format, so you need to use Open Office(or Word, ) to open it with.

If you want to be able to open it in Notead, you will need to save it from Open Office as a .txt file type

PasturesNew

Open it in OpenOffice. Simples.
Wordpad MIGHT work, it'd need to be tried - and would depend on any advanced features used in OpenOffice (e.g. styles, etc) as to whether that might be workable.

John_Gray

Save it As Word 97/2000/XP .DOC format (wording may not be exact) and preferable set this option as the Default.

An alternative is .RTF (Rich Text Format) - but don't do this if you are using tables, graphics or photographs, since with these the file size can become very large.

You'll be able to read some of the data in these file types with NOTEPAD, but it won't be awfully easy!

calvin.84

yes you can try to open it with notepad ++ that will give you the same format.

Jake'sGran

Thank you all. I don't have Word as I said in my post. I have transferred it to a disc and am quietly confident that I can print it from there as it is on the disc in it's original form.

Ximian

You could also try downloading and installing the free Microsoft Word Viewer which you can also print from:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3657ce88-7cfa-457a-9aec-f4f827f20cac&displaylang=en

KingL

Jake'sGran wrote: »

I will apologise first because I have asked this before. I did do a search in this forum but did not get anywhere probably because my search
words were not accurate enough..

Actually you have asked it twice before - this time last year and again in February this year
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1808869
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2275125

To find this kind of old stuff - use the 'advanced search' (an option under Forum Search) menu, do a search on the word "open" and specify the poster's name (your own!).

Jake'sGran

KingL wrote: »

Actually you have asked it twice before - this time last year and again in February this year
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1808869
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2275125

To find this kind of old stuff - use the 'advanced search' (an option under Forum Search) menu, do a search on the word "open" and specify the poster's name (your own!).

Thank you. I feel even more embarrassed now.I did save the responses I got earlier and will now save the advice you have found.

John_Gray

Jake'sGran wrote: »

Thank you all. I don't have Word as I said in my post.

If that's an answer to me, please note that I said that you should save the Open Office Write document in the Microsoft Word format, not that you had Microsoft Word installed...!

DVardysShadow

John_Gray wrote: »

If that's an answer to me, please note that I said that you should save the Open Office Write document in the Microsoft Word format, not that you had Microsoft Word installed...!

You are overcomplicating it. Jake's Gran does not have Word. Therefore there is no need whatsoever to change the default format from the Open Office format.

If she is using Open Office as an editor to create txt files, even if saving in Word format makes the file readable to notepad, it is still not in txt format.