Openoffice Book File Compatibility

English
#1

I am editing a self-published novel in OpenOffice in a template provided by Amazon that has a lot of custom styles and formats in the styles menu. I’d like to move it to LibreOffice because the friend who is writing the novel has a Samsung laptop with Windows 11 on it and OpenOffice is constantly crashing on her. If I open the file in Libre will the styles and the template move with it or do I have to do a lot of prep work? I’m fairly computer literate, I know nothing about Libre, but Id like to change over to it.

Thanks for your help.

#2

Welcome @Kintala!

You know, this question is often asked. The most popular answer was “Just try it! If you run into difficulties - ask again”. I do not remember the cases when those discussion continued - most likely, there were no problems.

Therefore, “Just try it!”

#3

In addition: right now, install LibreOffice at your system without deleting Apache OpenOffice (is it the productivity suite that you use, or what?), back up your document and try editing in LO. In case of failure, you can simply launch AOO again.

#4

Your question lacks precision but involves apparently two cases.

You mention a “template”. This template can be implemented as inital content in a dummy document you use as a base for your novel. Here, everything is internal to the document and opening it in LO Writer will lose nothing.

The template can also be implemented as a “technical” template file with extension .ott (in LO, it may have a different extension in AOO). Your novel may be internally linked to this template file. Though opening the document directly in LO will work, it may lose the relationship between the template and the document if you move the latter without the former (and to be accurate, when you move both they must keep the same relative position in the file system). It does not matter if you don’t intend to customise the template because all styles have already been copied into the document. However if you modify the template and the document cannot access it with the initial relative path, you won’t have automatic style update.
(Nota: update only removed typos and misspellings)

1 Like
#5

Thank you all for your help. I will download it and give it a try on a copy of the file and update later with the results. I did do a search of the forum before I asked, btw and didn’t come up with anything.

Thanks again!

#6

SOLVED:
Thank you all for your responses. I did download Libre and have been working in it now since the original post without any complications. It did import over all of the custom styles in the document. I love the user interface of Libre. Thanks again!

#7

@Kintala,
please mark the appropriate post as the solution. Thanks.

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