Can I force a particular application to open a file?

I have some powerpoint presentations (with a .ppt file) which I am trying to open in Impress. For some reason, even if I’ve started Impress and choose Open, or use the Impress wizard, or try to open the file using the impress command line shortcut, they always open in Writer – or, rather, try to open. It just appears as a jumbled text. It opens fine in powerpoint viewer, so I think the file itself is fine.

Is there any way to try to force impress to open it?

Hmm… that’s very bizarre. Could you please tell us your OS and version of LO? Any chance that you could post an example file somewhere that demostrates this behavior?

Would it work if you run from the command line libreoffice -show filename.ppt? Just an idea to try.

This is happening to me with Version: 4.3.3.2 Build ID: 9bb7eadab57b6755b1265afa86e04bf45fbfc644 This is on Windows 7 Home, On Ubuntu 12.04 the same file opens with Impress fine.

Hi @jxn,

If installing the latest release doesn’t seem to fix this problem, please file a bug and provide a list of steps that can reproduce it. Please make sure to attach an example file or two that demonstrate this behavior. That will help us to determine if this problem is specific to particular machines, particular OSes, etc…

The QA team will be happy to help you track down this issue! Please post a link to any bugs you file in a comment below using the format “fdo#123456”.

Thanks!

Hi, I have the same, when I try to open antique ppt that I created long ago in microsoft powerpoint before y2k.
It does not appear with more modern ppt
→ My guess is that it happens with older formats (ppt 2, 6, 95, 97, 2000 seem to be different formats, after all)
NB I can’t find the link to attach file, otherwise you could experiment with it :frowning:

Was your problem solved? I can see the same using Windows 8.1 and LO4.3.4 (even with 4.2.5, that i have uninstalled and installed 4.3.4, but it didn’t help). I try to open a PPT created in 1997. It opens in Writer instead of Impress. I deleted the registry entries for ppt and pptx in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, still same - Writer opens the file.

I recently opened an LibO file (forgot which application) after removing the extension and just double click on it. It opened correctly.

You could also see what happens when you delete the file extension.

Lib 3.5/7 or LibO 3.6.4 on XP/SP3

even if i removed the extension, selected simpress.exe to open the file, it opens with Writer instead! Very strange.