Hi I have been using Text Documents for a few weeks. And have been saving files as WORD documents. I am not sure why, but as of today I select Word from the menu (a before), now when I retreive the document it shows a text file!!!.
What do I need to change/fix? Thanks
I am assuming you are using Windows and have an older version of LibreOffice
Right-clicking in File Explorer and selecting New > OpenDocument Text or (New > Microsoft Word Document) creates an empty file with an .odt (or .docx) extension.
If you open that in older versions of LO there is nothing there so it is the most basic form of file: a text file. So it is a really bad idea to create files that way
This year sometime some extra functionality was added to new versions of LibreOffice to look at the extension and create a basic OpenDocument file. I don’t know, because I can’t test it on this computer, if it can create a basic .docx. This document is not created using your template so it is still a bad way to create a file but you won’t lose all your formatting.
There is a difference in what .odt and .docx files can contain. Saving as .docx might lead to disappointment when, on re-opening, things are missing or changed. See Differences between Microsoft and AOO/LO files
The solution is to open LibreOffice and create your files from within the program and to save in native OpenDocument format. Cheers, Al
I think you can just go to File>Save As - and then in that dialogue box beside the file name you can choose what file type you want to save it as.
I’m not sure why it would change the default file type from .odt or .docx to .txt, but you want to save the file either as a .odt or .docx type. You can also set the default save type in the preferences menu.
BTW the .docx is the Microsoft word format and .odt is the Open Document Format. They both have the same functionality but the .docx is more commonly used while the .odt is better for long term document storage because it’s an open source file standard.
Also important, .odt is the native text file format of LibreOffice, .docx is an alien format. Saving to alien formats might not save every feature you have been using while editing the document. Keep your files in native ODF formats to work on and only export to alien formats when needed.