I am a strong supporter of Libreoffice and use it daily, having abandoned Microsoft completely.
However, when I go to conferences with my Impress presentations, most charts created in Impress are corrupted. I have tried saving in all types of format, with little success. Conversion to PDF is not an option as I have videos in the presentation, and still some graphs become corrupted (lines all over the place, fonts changing etc). Bringing one’s laptop is also not an option in big conferences.
There is probably no answer currently, but it would make a big difference to people who do not want to be forced back to Microsoft Office if LibreOffice developers tried to solved the compatibility problems, particularly for Impress-Powerpoint.
Thank you
Kostas D
That is not really a question 
There is a workaround for that problem: carry LibreOffice portable in the pen with the presentation (assuming the PC running it uses Windows, which is most likely).
This takes around 300MB (if you get rid of unused extensions) and will save you the trouble of converting from ODP. You might even be able to convince the organization to have LO also available (after all it’s free 
)
I have successfully generated .ppt files using LibreOffice Presentation (from OOo files, no less…) that play back both in older Powerpoint (Office2000) and in current PowerPoint (Office2010) in “compatibility mode”. I have both app-suites on my system for compatibility reasons, but I generally do not use Office for composition. The MS XML file description is a mystery, but .ppt is not, so it seems.
Thanks for your time
The European Society of Cardiology and other major congresses require ppt presentations, there is no option of carrying and plugging in portable libreoffice or own PC.
I have used your suggestion in smaller meetings, and it does indeed work.
I was recently (last week), however, giving a lecture at a smaller meeting and I was warmly requested never again to send them an openoffice presentation (or pdf) because when opened with ppt many graphs were corrupt and they could not work on the pdf.
I do not see a solution to this.
(I am sorry for not formatting my first and this entry as questions, was hoping someone would have a brilliant method to convert files)
Thanks
KD
There is no brilliant solution… Microsoft’s formats are proprietary and their specifications are either undisclosed or incomplete (so it is not easy to make a perfect export filter for LO). And obviously Microsoft isn’t trying too hard to support ODF (so it’s impossible to use ODF in MS Office)
I agree that exporting to PDF is not an option. But saving as PPT (instead of PPTX) is currently your best bet. Major congresses will slowly start to open their minds to ODF as it becomes more ubiquitous (and has no cost )
I really do hope they do!! Thanks again. K
It may have (almost) no financial cost for it’s acquisition, but there are HUGE penalties for using it.
In terms of wasted time, lost of productivity, incompatability, unable to be archives, the lack of font embedding, the inability to be transferred between systems using specific fonts, the PDF encoder only uses 14 fonts - while most users have hundreds to thousands of fonts.
While much of Libre Office is great is used only with it’s self on it’s own machine of origin, anything other than that and it’s crapware.
I suggests you to use a low level format presentations saved in M$-Powerpoint format and a colored text position bar as in web pages (the active slide can be mark with light color and the rests with dark color). That can be very useful, if is combined with different colored backgrounds, for implement a transition effect… Graphics can be use as *.png images.
RE congresses supporting ODF: Only when it actually gets some stability and the tools actually work as advertised (let alone correct)
The lack of MS compatibility is an issue. I need to do some checking on backward compatibility with older PPT formats; the new PPT version is sticky on those too. I have never heard of a conference that could accommodate a memory stick OOo or LO system in say, PortableApps format. This sounds more like a low-end computer-guy being a pain in the ass. As for we’can’t-edit/use-pdfs – any physician who pulled that on me would not get me as a patient; editing and converting PDFs is generally trivial.
One thing you could try for the few occasions that you need to have files formatted as .PPTx you could use Microsoft’s web version of Office. it does allow for editing but not nearly as powerful as LibreOffice or MS Office. Perhaps even do the work in LibreOffice and then put the final formatting touches on the presentation using the web version to clean up the compatibility issues. I’m just tossing ideas out.
I too have abounded MS Office and switched completely to LO. However, in Impress there are quiet a few bugs and some enhancements are needed. Like it or not the yard stick for comparison is MS Office. (Although I would love to see LO in the lead and have MS running behind!)
For me the issues I found in Impress are really an issue and I am considering to use for a while another presentation SW. But, optimistic as I am I hope that the LO development team for Impress can get a boost to push the level of Impress much higher. I am currently looking forward for 3.7.0 because it is said that there are quiet some improvements in Impress. Thank you very much dev team and I hope you get the boost you need.