Saving documents in LibreOffice that were created with Microsoft Wordpad

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#1

after opening a document in LibreOffice that had been created in Microsoft Wordpad and pressing the “Save” icon, a pop box comes up that says, "This document may contain formatting or content that cannot be saved in the currently selected file format “Rich Text”.

i have the option of choosing “Rich Text Format” or “ODF Format”. i just want to open, edit, save, close and then open edit and safe again. Ya know, like i’ve been doing with MIcrosoft Wordpad for THIRTY years! LOL

Question: should i have and/or will i have any problems if i click on one option or the other option?

thx for your help

#2

Yes use the ODF format on initial save. That completes the conversion from Wordpad .doc/.rtf and saves as a fully described ODF Text document.

Subsequent openings will be as ODF with minimal filter conversions needed.

ODF is considered the “native” document format(s) for LibreOffice. It really is best to work in those formats, and then export convert to other document formats if needed.

The “warning” in the pop-up on save is just letting you know that you’d be reverting back to the source document format, but it is rarely advantageous to do so.

#4

I selected not only the ODF format, but also dsselected “Ask when not saving in ODF format.”

now when i open other files they all come up with gibberish! have i ruined ALL my thousands of files by having selected the ODF format option?

i’m afraid to do anything else without recommendations from someone who knows what to do.

need more help than ever!

thx

#7

If you save as ODF, it would not ask you in the first place. And thus, you would have no opportunity to deselect that “Ask when not saving in ODF format”. So - your words that you saw that question, and deselected it, says clearly, that you did not save as ODF. At best, you could change the extension of the file, but not the file format. Which could somehow lead to the file opened as “gibberish” (where?..).

#3

RTF is an obsolete format which support is now dropped by M$ (though these documents can still be read correctly by M$ applications).

Writer internal format is ODF. This format is independent from any proprietary formats. It has been designed and specified based on original concepts. They aim to provide solutions to common typographical requirements. But these requirements must use the concepts during the translation (for display and storage). You easily imagine that the detailed encoding will vary with the format. And since the formats were designed with certainly different goals, you understand that some “goals” are easier in one of the format and probably only approximated in the other one.

To answer your question needs to know what you will do with your present documents. If you intend to actively edit them, switch to the native format of the editing application, here in case of Writer: ODF. And this also means restructuring contents to follow the formatting model, i.e. using styles.

If you only exceptionally edit and accept a few “anomalies” in rendering, keep the existing format.

A "platinum rule’ states you should always work in application native format. If you don’t, your document will go through a translation/conversion on opening and a reverse one on saving. But, these conversions are not exact. A round trip never returns the bit-for-bit same document. This results in cumulative damage with edit cycles. And you end up with an unusable document whose formatting is an unmanageable nightmare.

If some of your documents are really 30 years old, they are pieces of antiques (30 years is eternity in computer technology). I bet that their RTF version is not the same as the latest available.

#5

thanks for your reply. it’s such a good and thorough reply, but unfortunately, i don’t quite understand some of it.

like “native format”. is ODF the native in my case or is RTF native?

on another person’s suggestion, i chose to save in the ODF format and also deselcted the “Ask when not saving in ODF format.” but now when i go to open other files (that were recently created, as in NOT 30 years old), they come up as gibberish.

by selecting the “the use ODF format” and deselecting “the Ask when not saving in ODF format” have i screwed things up permanently?

need more help now than ever!

thx.

#6

ODF is LO native format.

Deselecting Ask when not ODF only suppresses the warning and saves blindly in whatever format you chose. This will not damage existing files (apart from rewriting them if you don’t change the name).

Attach a small file for analysis. There is surely another cause than saving ODF without asking as it never prevents to open other files.

#8

RTF is the format used by export, so you may name it as native format of Wordpad.
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ODF (or .odt in this case) is the native “language” of LibreOffice and opening other files will result in a translation from the foreign/old format to LibreOffice internal world. Like calculation of gallons to liter, mile to km etc. Sometimes there may be errors (when you find “sea-level” in Germany and Switzerland is different), some can be corrected, some cause problems…
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When saving back to foreign formats all calculations are done in the other direction.
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So to avoid double work and some errors use .odt, if possible for Lo/Writer.

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#9

Is that opening in WordPad or in Writer? WordPad cannot open .odt files.
Note that Wordpad is removed from computers by Microsoft in Windows 11 24H2 and later

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When you Save As a different file type, you need to actually select the file type from the Save as type field as shown below.
SaveAsODTfromRTF
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To get the Warning dialogue, that you dismissed, back to visibility click Tools > Options > Load/Save > General and tick the box Warn when not saving in ODF or default format

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