Why is my .odt document created in LibreOffice not rendered perfectly in MS Word 2013?

[cheflo]

I created a .odt document in LibreOffice, including a few pictures and differently formatted paragraphs. When I open this document in Word 2013, it shows a black background on some of the pictures and my three column header is misaligned. When I created a similar .odt document in Word, all the pictures and tables showed up just fine in LibreOffice.

I understand other compatibility issues between these two office suits, such as LibreOffice not being able do perfectly read .doc and .docx since these are proprietary formats. Or that some MS Word specific features cannot be saved as .odt since they are made with .docx as default. But when creating a document in LibreOffice, which uses .odt as its native format, and .odt being an open document standard, shouldn’t it be pretty easy to make sure it is correctly rendered when opened in different word processors?

I am not trying to start a flame war being MS Office and LibreOffice and I am not looking for subjective opinions on what is the best Word processor. I am just curious if there actually are intricate technical difficulties limiting Microsoft from fully supporting .odt or if this is just a matter of MS not prioritizing to implement full support for .odt?

[jmadero]

Report a bug to Microsoft - tell them to stop pretending like they support ODF. Let them know that you, as a presumptive paid user, want them to stop delaying full support, to put resources in supporting it, and to stop lying about what is preventing them from doing so. Unfortunately, LibreOffice has been blamed more than once for Microsoft’s failure in this area :-/

[ROSt53]

First your question: The answer is simply that MSO does not fully support the ODF standard; LibO does.

What are you using:

• OS?
• LibO version?
• Word file format used to save the odt-file?

It actually seems that you are opening an odt-file with WORD 2013. This will not work because of what I wrote in the first line. LibO uses filters to deal with other formats.

You need to save the odt-file in doc or docx format and open then in WORD.

What follows are some comments about my experience and ways to avoid problems.

In respect to MSO formats, I stay always until the end in LibO native formats and only create a MSO copy of the last saved version and still try to avoid the x-formats. Additionally I made the experience that a pdf-file is in most of my cases sufficient. Many people send out files in MSO or LibO or other formats when a pdf-file is sufficient. Depending on the situation you can even secure a pdf-file against copying and changes. The pdf-export function in LibO works very well. (I am using 4.3.5.2)

In the case of presentations I am also often asked to provide a ppt or pptx copy as a fall back solution is something happens with my PC or connection of my own PC is not possible, etc. For this I always carry a USB stick with a portable LibO version on it and my presentation. All I need is PC to plug the USB stick and can run on LIbO my own presentation.

[oweng]

Microsoft Office 2013 supports ODF v1.2 whereas LibreOffice by default saves to the ODF v1.2 Extended file format i.e., a format that will eventually become ODF v1.3 (or similar). Try adjusting the save options (or on the save dialog) to write out in ODF v1.2 instead and see if the problems persist.

[ROSt53]

@oweng - How can the save options be changed to ODF1.2? I cannot find any possibility in the Save As dialog.

[mariosv]

@ROSt53, Menu/Tools/Options/Load-Save - Default format and ODF settings.

[oweng]

@ROSt53, I wrote my response from memory. Thanks for the clarification.

[ROSt53]

@ m.a.riosv - Thanks for the hint. My setting is 1.2 Extended (recommended) and I assume this is the default LibO setting. Help gives also good information about the formats under “Default file format and ODF settings”