Hi,
I am trying to use libreoffice for academic work, but many of my colleagues still use word (both windows and mac versions), and when I save my documents in either .doc or .docx formats, it always messes up the formatting of my footnotes, and sometimes even the text (especially when converting to .docx)
Is there any solution to this problem at present, or coming soon? Or I am afraid I will have to revert to MS Office…
Maria
LibreOffice works internally in ODF format. When you open or save a doc or docx a conversion is performed. Since MS Formats are not open standards the conversion is the best possible.
Even the docx format which is supposed to be an ISO standard is different from MS Office 2007 to 2010 (how is that for a Standard? 
)
In the current situation you have two options: a) convince your co-authors to switch to ODF and use LibreOffice or some other ODF based word processor (the more people using it the more likely it will be to get rid of MS format monopoly) or b) stick to MS Office.
Even the docx format which is supposed to be an ISO standard is different from MS Office 2007 to 2010 > (how is that for a Standard?
Isn’t Open Office supposed to read at least its own DOCX exports correctly?
Looking around to see if there’s a bug report on this, I came across this. I have to say, the answer that Pedro gave is not at all helpful. The correct answer is: this is a bug in the LO import filter. Certainly it can, and should, do better.
LOL. It should do better. But “at present, or coming soon” the only solutions available are the two I suggested. Do you know a better solution?
Pedro’s answer may not be ‘helpful’ (in the sense of an immediate fix to using .doc/x) but it is accurate. The issue sounds to be one of collaborative workflow which demands identical platform/products. Support of .doc/x is improving all the time, but it will likely never be perfect.
2021 and the filter isn’t fixed yet.
Even worse, the issue has nothing to do with Word. I used Open Office Writer to edit a *.docx document and after saving and reloading all footnotes became endnotes. There was no MS Office in the middle to eat the homework.