Why does opening .docx documents fail on Ubuntu 13.10 with LO 4.1.3.2?

My operating system is ubuntu 13.10. I receive e-mail through gmail. I use firefox and chrome to surf the internet. In the last seven days I received e-mail attached with docx documents. My Libre Office is Version: 4.1.3.2. When I open the docx attachment with LibreOffice Writer, it always failed. What can I do?

@wonghpm, it is possible your issue it not related to a lack of support for OOXML (DOCX) but rather an issue with email attachments. In this case, the solution will vary according to the application software being used, as indicated in this question / answer.

Support for DOCX will remain potentially problematic for some time as not all OOXML features are supported. There are various reasons why the document may not be opening. It may be a large and complex document and so may take a long time to open, or alternatively it may contain features that LO has trouble with. You could try upgrading to v4.2.2.1 to see if that offers better support, although if you are using the version of LO from the Ubuntu repositories, you may not want to do this. It may also be a problem with the Ubuntu-provided version of LO. If all else fails, please report a bug and include the problem document for others to test.

Opening .docx files with Libreoffice 3.6.5 worked and still works on Windows XP SP3. Maybe if you try an older version of LO for Linux you’ll find one that works for you; perhaps beginning by trying the most recent version 3.x.y, whatever x and y are for LO on Linux. I think the most recent one of those for Windows is either 3.6.5 or 3.6.6.