If you switched from Word to Writer, how do you handle your old .doc files and new .odt files?

I recently started using LibreOffice Writer and like it better than my old Word 2000.

My document filing method for umpteen years is that I have a “WinWord” folder that contains a lot of sub-folders for my different categories. They are all filled with umpteen Word 2000 .doc files. Nothing fancy, just my own writings on how I did things, letters to friends or businesses, and such. I rarely need to send a .doc file to others.

If you switched from Word to Writer, did you just use your existing Word folders and mix your new .odt files with the existing .doc files? Or did you create a new folder for your LibreOffice files and keep your .odt files separate from your old .doc files?

Trying to figure out a good filing strategy before I get too far in to using LibreOffice Writer.

Make new folder for your odt file. LibreOffice is very good in handling doc file, but they are not the same.When you open doc file, fix any formating issues you might have (not many) and save that document in odt and edit it from now on as odt. No need to start doing it for every doc file you ever made, but just the once you need as you need them. Naturally, every new document you make - save it as odt.

You could mix odt and doc in same folder but if you really want to use LibreOffice from now on, you essentially want to get rid of all doc files and start using odt. Old doc file are good backups so don’t try to get rid of them.

Backup your file regularly anyway.

Thank you for your input. I think I’ll try gabix’s method first and use LibreOffice to open both doc and odt files. If I find problems with LO opening old Word doc files, then I’ll switch to your method. I hope LO’s compatibility with my old doc files will be fine.
Best regards,
Raptor88

It is up to you to decide. I routinely work with a mix of formats (ODT/DOC/DOCX/RTF for texts, ODS/XLS/XLSX for spreadsheets, ODP/PPT/PPTX for presentations) and keep them in same directories. If you only need to keep old documents for reference, well, just keep them and create new documents alongside with new ones. If you, however, might need to return to them and edit, consider using the file converter wizard (File → Wizards → Document Converter) for batch conversion.

I think I will try your method. It will make it easier to access old Word .doc files.
Thanks.

Perhaps, I was not clear enough. Accessing old documents for mere reading is easy anyway, as LibreOffice’s support for old DOC files is quite good. You can even edit them and save without much risk. However, I always keep on telling: do not use foreign file formats for on-going work. If you need to modify a document, save it to ODF and only after have finished the task export it to any other format (as needed).

I assume your meant “save it to ODT” instead of “ODF”. I will do that since I do update some of my Word docs on an ongoing basis. Thanks.

Just adding new odt files to my existing folders with doc files did not work well for me. When I did a “save as”, LO did not display my older doc files so I could not see them. Seeing my older doc files when saving files is important for me.

So I set LO to save as doc files. This allows LO to work like my old Word 2000 when saving files. The formatting I do in my documents are very simple like using bullet numbered lists and adding a picture now and then. So I think saving as doc files will work OK for me. I’ll use the save dates that are listed in Windows “detail” view to determine which doc files were saved using LO. Any file after today’s date will have been created using LO.

This may be a feature that the LO programmers might want to incorporate. IOW the ability to display all files in a folder even though LO is set to save documents as odt. Then doc, docx and odt files would be visible when doing a save as.

Raptor88