MS Word can't open LibreOffice .doc file

Arno77 · July 26, 2021, 11:20pm

When the person trying to open in MS Office some (not all, but not the only one) files, which I create in LibreOffice, the Errors shut down her MS Office:

The document ‘Filename’ caused a serious error the last time it was opened. Would you like to continue opening it?
Error: word couldn’t start last time. safe mode could help you troubleshoot the problem

I load these files in Google docs and into the online MS Office (official site) - I have no problems.

How coluld I find the problem with my LibreOffoce and my collegue’s MS Office?

Thank you in advance.

EarnestAl · July 26, 2021, 11:48pm

I have an elderly Office 2010 installation, it struggles with .odt (fail), .docx from LO (very occasional fail), .docx from Word for Mac (layout changes), but opens .doc from LO without falling over. I suspect your recipient has an even older version of Office. Is it .doc you sent or .docx?

Arno77 · July 27, 2021, 1:40am

I’ve sent .doc files

EarnestAl · July 27, 2021, 1:55am

So it could be a very complex .doc, or some font or image not supported by that version, possibly an illegal character in the filename, or too long a filename&path. Insufficient room on recipient’s computer. I don’t think it can be diagnosed by guesswork, especially when I think back to all the MS Office crashes I had over the years of which all the above examples (except image) were experienced.

Or maybe it was co-incidental. They can remove the filename from the disabled file list of Word, see this Microsoft documentation

mikekaganski · July 27, 2021, 5:37am

File a bug report with a sample problematic document.

keme · July 27, 2021, 9:37am

Does the recipient really have MS Word installed, and something more recent than version 6.0?

I have seen symptoms as described when user attempts to open .doc files in WordPad (bundled writing tool in MS Windows).
I even saw a copy of MS Write “in the wild” recently, which also was troubled by .doc storage format, but that is not a very likely scenario. I digress, I guess.

EarnestAl · July 27, 2021, 9:47pm

In the scenario described by keme, the recipient could install LibreOffice, or even just run a copy of LibreOffice portable off a USB, or copy it to the main drive and run it from there.

Arno77 · July 28, 2021, 9:39am

Dear Mike, unfortunately, my collegue is not so frendly and not so advanced user :(((((
She won’t send me the bug report.

Dear Keme, she really has MS Office (not WordPad).

Dear Earnest, it’s impossible to ask her to install something else. She will kill me for this idea :)))))
She and her system administrator think, that the problem is in my comp, But I’m sure not. I don’t want to install MS Office in my notebook, so, special for her I’ve find the official online MS Office.