Upgrading Word reformatted LibreWriter documents

[Kostuj]

Hi,

I have been staying with Office/Writer version 7.6.7.2 and not updating for a while now, hoping that I would not encounter any unexpected surprises while substantially revising a book of mine. I am still hopeful that I can finish this process with Libre.

Separately, however, and largely for improved computer security, I very recently found a need to update my very old Microsoft Office 2003 to Office 2024. And unbeknownst to me, that installation process apparently associated itself in one or more ways to all of my Libre/ODF files, including having the new Word program open those files.

I was able to change to have Libre open the files again without much difficulty. But I am also getting notable formatting changes in various ways, and at least at the moment I have lost a good deal of my previous work since updating my Microsoft Office.

I am also now getting a message upon opening my Libre files saying that, “The following formats are not registered to be opened by default in LibreOffice:

.odp
.ods

Select OK if you want to change default file format registrations.”

But I have not taken any steps yet since discovering this, as I am not sure what the effect(s) would be and I wanted to make a quick inquiry about it here first. I would be grateful for any recommendations regarding how to get my original formatting back the way I originally intended it within LibreWriter. Thank you very much in advance for any possible suggestions. I really appreciate it.

[Hrbrgr]

@Kostuj

“The following formats are not registered to be opened by default in LibreOffice:

.odp
.ods

Assign files to LibreOffice

[Wanderer]

@Kostuj

But I have not taken any steps yet since discovering this, as I am not sure what the effect(s) would be

You can safely set this back to LibreOffice. The only “change” is, wich program is called, if you double-click one of these files.
.
But this will not change any formatting in your documents… And as it is not related to .odt, it may not affect you at all in Writer. (.ods is for Calc-sheets, …)
.
The best way “back” may be to check your backups for a version before your update. If I’m remembering right, there is an option to compare two documents to find out where you made changes.
.
If you don’t do backups often I wish you good luck but recommend to change this first. Together with: When opening with another software change the name when saving…

[EarnestAl]

@Kostuj

at least at the moment I have lost a good deal of my previous work since updating my Microsoft Office.

If the document was saved in Microsoft Office (online version saves automatically) then you are likely to have lost formatting that Word does not support. Microsoft claim compatibility with ODF 1.3 so if you did save from MS Office 2024 and lost formatting you could try to post a bug report with them

[mikekaganski]

@Kostuj

But I am also getting notable formatting changes in various ways, and at least at the moment I have lost a good deal of my previous work since updating my Microsoft Office.

This is unexpected. I can only think of two things how it could happen:

1. You opened the files in MS Office, and then saved them there. Of course, that would change the files much. At this stage, you would definitely need a backup of your files to restore from.

2. The upgrade of MS Office has removed fonts that were used in your documents. Then you would need to check which used font are missing (in LibreOffice, such fonts would be displayed italicized in the font selector), and either replace with existing fonts (and reformat the documents, because of the different fonts would likely still have different metrics), or find and install the needed fonts.

See e.g. this MS Q&A.