Right-click in a Win11 folder > New > OpenDocument Text: Can it open a .doc file rather than .odt?

[BothHands]

Hi, all. This is my first post.

I’ve been using MS Office 2000 since it was released. My now-ancient versions of Word and Excel have served well my relatively simple needs, and over the years I’ve accumulated scads of .doc and .xls files, many of which I rely on frequently.

I recently found it necessary to upgrade from Windows7 to Win10, and to Win11 on another computer. Excel 2000 runs well on both, but Word 2000 is a little glitchy on Win10, and freezes on Win11. So here I am. My last encounter with LibreOffice was years ago; I didn’t like it and managed to remain with the Microsoft applications. This current LO version has come a long way since then. I like it and hope it can be configured to accommodate my unusual circumstances.

I’ve learned how to set up Writer to save .doc files automatically:
Tools > Options > Load/Save > General > Always save as Word 97-2003 (.doc).

That’s GREAT, but frequently I need to right-click within a Windows folder
and select New > OpenDocument Text.

When I do that, LO Writer creates an .odt file.
So far, I find it necessary to open that file and select Save as… to render a .doc file. Then I must delete the original .odt file.

Is there a setting that would streamline this process? That would enable me to create a .doc file in response to: Win11 right-click > New > OpenDocument Text

[Villeroy]

Not working with the native file format of your application is a very bad idea. Only the odt format can guarantee that you can use all LibreOffice features and store the products of those features in your documents. The same is valid for Word.doc, Photoshop.psd and any application producing document files.
menu:File>Wizards>Document converter… creates copies of all your doc(x), ppt(x) and xls(x) Open Document Format, so you can continue working with your files in the native file format of the application you are using.

[Hrbrgr]

@BothHands

When I do that, LO Writer creates an .odt file.

This is the normal setting for LibreOffice because Writer is an ODT machine.
To create (save) doc files, Writer has to apply many conversion functions (filters).
The same applies when you open doc files in Writer. Applying these filters frequently will sooner or later lead to problems.

---

Make a clean cut:

My Transition from MS-Office to LibreOffice

[Wanderer]

Right-click in a Win11 folder > New > OpenDocument Text: Can it open a .doc file rather than .odt?

Actually the question is wrong in two ways. The New function in Explorer does not open a file, but it creates one. The second false assumption is LibreOffice being asked to do something here.
.
Either create a new Word text document, wich would be opened then by LO, if configured so. Or modify the ShellNew entries in the registry.

[mikekaganski]

The shell’s New functionality is defined in Windows Registry. Each program may register its files’ extensions to have respective New entries, by adding proper keys into the extensions’ registry entries.

.DOC files are not LibreOffice file type. LibreOffice has a limited ability to import this external file type, and export to that file type as well. Indeed, as with any external file types, it may lose information (formats, or even content) both on import, and on export. Also indeed, as a too configurable application, LibreOffice offers a nice tool to shoot own foot, by configuring the default save format to be some external file format, thus even disabling the due warning about possible data loss (the user themselves defined that setting, so obviously they know what they are doing, right?).

And OpenDocument Text can never be a .DOC, just because OpenDocument file format is an international standard, which is absolutely not a binary proprietary .DOC file format.

But let me stop stating the obvious, and return to the registry. If you want to have a New entry for your .DOC:

1. Open regedit.exe.
2. Navigate to Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.doc.
3. Notice, what is the data of the (Default) value. Mine has Word.Document.8 there:

4. Make sure that there is a respective key under Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.doc. In my case, I needed to create a new key:

5. Under that key, make sure that there is another key, named ShellNew.
6. Inside that final key, create a string value named NullFile:

That’s all. Now you will have an entry for the .DOC file in your New menu. The name of that entry will be defined by the content of the (Default) value under Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\<name_found_at_step_3>. E.g., for me it was Microsoft Word 97 - 2003 Document:

And thus, on my system, the entry in the New menu is named so:

That entry will create an empty zero-byte file with .DOC extension; and LibreOffice, starting from version 7.1 (tdf#123476), will create a “proper” .DOC from that placeholder.