Monday, December 3, 2007

Working with .docx files in PCLinuxOS

There has been much hoopla over the so called new standard of Microsoft Word - .docx file format, introduced in Microsoft Office 2007. I don’t assume it as a better format to .odt, the native format of OpenOffice.org. But sometimes we need to work on those files. May be your boss mailed you a text document in .docx format or may be you worked on Microsoft Word in your office and took home to work on it later on PCLinuxOS.

Before, going ahead with the solution, let me remind you that: you can "Save As" your .docx file as .doc in Microsoft Office 2007. This option is there.

However, if you want to take a little challenge, here is how to fix OpenOffice.org to open and edit .docx files.

1. Update your OpenOffice.org.
2. Download odf-converter-1.0.0-5.i586.rpm
3. Install file-roller.
4. Open the odf-converter-1.0.0-5.i586.rpm using file-roller.
5. Extract /usr/lib/ooo-2.0 from inside the rpm to your desktop.

  • Now in "ooo-2.0" folder you have a program at /ooo-2.0/program, named "OdfConverter". Go to konsole, as root, and issue: cp /home/YourUsername/Desktop/ooo-2.0/program/OdfConverter /usr/lib/ooo-2.3/program

  • Then, there is a file named "MOOXFilter_cpp.xcu" located in /ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter. Once again as root issue: cp /home/YourUsername/Desktop/ooo-2.0/share/registry/ modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter/ MOOXFilter_cpp.xcu /usr/lib/ooo-2.3/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter

  • The third file is "MOOXTypeDetection.xcu" and is located in /ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types. As root issue: cp /home/YourUsername/Desktop/ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types/ MOOXTypeDetection.xcu /usr/lib/ooo-2.3/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types
You are done! Now reboot the system and try working on your .docx files on top of OpenOffice.org in PCLinuxOS. Eureka!!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

will the OO.org in next pclinuxos have support for .docx files?

manmath sahu said...

Better put this question in pclinuxos forum or granular linux forum or pclinuxos gnome remaster forum or ultumix forum.

Alex said...

Try work with - Fix Word file docx, do something recover information from corrupted Microsoft Word documents and templates, allows users to avoid losing data important for them. Indeed, Microsoft Word is nowadays the most popular tool for creating any documents, including corporate ones, program scans and analyzes the source file. During this process, it extracts any information that can be extracted from it.

manmath sahu said...

hi alex,
does "fix word file docx" work on pclinuxos?

Anonymous said...

Looks like that link is no longer available from Novell.

manmath sahu said...

now that odf-converter is available in pclinuxos repository also.

How about this