Open docx files in OpenOffice on Ubuntu

I’ve been using Office 2007 quite happily for some time now. But the niggles are starting to hit me.

One of the main issues is the new .docx format not being supported across the board yet. And with me being a sucker for all things new, I have to make a point of saving an alternate version to open in OpenOffice.

Until now.

I found this little nugget on the Ubuntu forums to install the Novell converter in Ubuntu:

1) Download the file odf-converter-1.0.0-5.i586.rpm from http://download.novell.com/SummaryFree.jsp?buildid=ESrjfdE4U58~

2) Use alien to convert it to a Slackware tgz file

alien -ct odf-converter-1.0.0-5.i586.rpm

3) Unpack the slackware tgz file

tar xzf odf-converter-1.0.0.tgz

4) Copy three files into your OpenOffice.org directories — note that the usr that you’re copying from is a directory that was inside the tgz file (3 lines here)

sudo cp usr/lib/ooo-2.0/program/OdfConverter /usr/lib/openoffice/program/

sudo cp usr/lib/ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter/MOOXFilter_cpp.xcu /usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter/

sudo cp usr/lib/ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types/MOOXTypeDetection.xcu /usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types/

Once I restarted OpenOffice, I found that it could import basic docx files quite happily.

This worked nicely for me in Feisty Fawn – although it’s a good idea to make sure that OpenOffice is up-to-date.

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