Word .docx in LO Writer: different lines/page

English
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#1

Utter LO newbie!

LO 7.2.7.1, Word for Mac 16.67. .docx created in Word, opened in LO. Document is a book in progress. 273 pages in Word, 291 pages in LO. The multi-page TOC starts on p. 1, after the title, subtitle, and author; it contains three fewer entries in LO.

If I Save As from LO to a .docx with a different name and then open that in Word, it is 283 pages and the 1st TOC page has regained one of the three entries.

The LO view zoom is 142%, same as Word. But simultaneously on the same display, in LO everything looks a lot larger – type, white space. LO Layout/Margins are:
L=0.8", R=0.5", T=0.5", B=0.5"
The original Word’s Margins are:
L=0.8", R=0.5", T=0.8", B=0.5" (i.e., top margin 0.3" larger than LO)

I am mystified. What might I look at?

#2

Forget the idea that “compatibility” means that conversion of a DOCX file into an ODT file means that all formatting is preserved pixel-perfect. It isn’t. Your text will be preserved, like most of the basic formatting, but beyond that, expect many differences, especially when you use advanced features of either software.

#3

Don’t keep swapping between programs and formats you will damage your files. If working in LibreOffice always use native format, .odt; same advice for Word, always use .docx.
See Apache OpenOffice Community Forum - [Tutorial] Differences between Microsoft and AOO/LO files - (View topic)

#5

If I open a .docx in LO am I implicitly converting to ODT?

#6

OK. I am collaborating as an editor with the author of a book who uses Word. So I guess I can forget about using LO on this project.

#8

Yes. All experienced long-term users active on the Apache OpenOffice forum and this board will advise you, when you work on a document with other people, to use the same software as the others. And they love AOO and/or LO.

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#9

I am itching to switch because Word lost 12 hours of my work a couple of days ago. I don’t yet know how hard it will be to get the author to switch. Resolving, or largely resolving, this issue might remove a hindrance.

#10

Yes, I do have MS Office for when I need to work on MS documents.

This page might help Preventing data disaster - The Document Foundation Wiki
Cheers, Al

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#4

One explanation for the difference in page count is the divergence in margin concepts between both suite.

  • in Word, margins define the area where main text will be set; header and footer are sent into the top and bottom margins
  • in Writer, margins are no-print areas; they leave a usable space where main text, header and footer coexist

When importing from .docx, Writer does some computation to mitigate the difference, trying to adjust its margins to reincorporate header and footer into the usable area, meaning it tries to reduce Word margins. But this computation can be approximative.

Regarding the discrepancy in the TOC, I’d suspect some incorrect styling for your entries. Having not used Word for a decade and half at least, I don’t remember exactly how you “style” a paragraph to make it a chapter heading. If you customised this, the conversion may not detect it should be collected into TOC, due to an “unknown” paragraph style. Exporting as .docx keeps the paragraph styles and Word may again recognise these special paragraph styles as eligible for the TOC.

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#7

The TOC in LO has the same entries; it’s just that there are fewer per page so the TOC takes more pages. The headings themselves, within the book text, are styled via … Styles. LO imported my custom heading styles in the .docx.

#11

I was able to get both the LO and Word page lengths and number of TOC entries per page the same, and their on-screen pages, header areas, and footer areas to visually align vertically, by adjusting LO’s top page margin to 0.35" and bottom to 0.20" and by adjusting LO’s Zoom level to 101% and Word’s to 153%.

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