About Converting Microsoft Office Documents

Office can automatically open Microsoft Office 97/2000/XP documents. However, some layout features and formatting attributes in more complex Microsoft Office documents are handled differently in Office or are unsupported. As a result, converted files require some degree of manual reformatting. The amount of reformatting that can be expected is proportional to the complexity of the structure and formatting of the source document. Office cannot run Visual Basic Scripts, but can load them for you to analyse.

The most recent versions of Office can load and save the Microsoft Office Open XML document formats with the extensions docx, xlsx, and pptx. The same versions can also run some Excel Visual Basic scripts, if you enable this feature at Tools - Options - Load/Save - VBA Properties.

The following lists provide a general overview of Microsoft Office features that may cause conversion challenges. These will not affect your ability to use or work with the content of the converted document.

Microsoft Word

1. AutoShapes

2. Revision marks

3. OLE objects

4. Certain controls and Microsoft Office form fields

5. Indexes

6. Tables, frames and multi-column formatting

7. Hyperlinks and bookmarks

8. Microsoft WordArt graphics

9. Animated characters/text

Microsoft PowerPoint

1. AutoShapes

2. Tab, line and paragraph spacing

3. Master background graphics

4. Grouped objects

5. Certain multimedia effects

Microsoft Excel

1. AutoShapes

2. OLE objects

3. Certain controls and Microsoft Office form fields

4. Pivot tables

5. New chart types

6. Conditional formatting

7. Some functions/formulae (see below)

One example of differences between Calc and Microsoft Excel is the handling of boolean values. Enter TRUE to cells A1 and A2.

• In Calc, the formula =A1+A2 returns the value 2, and the formula =SUM(A1;A2) returns 2.
• In Excel, the formula =A1+A2 returns 2, but the formula =SUM(A1,A2) returns 0.

For a detailed overview about converting documents to and from Microsoft Office format, see the Migration Guide.

Opening Microsoft Office Documents That Are Protected With a Password

Office can open the following Microsoft Office document types that are protected by a password.

Microsoft Office files that are encrypted by AES128 can be opened. Other encryption methods are not supported.

Related Topics

• Using Microsoft Office and Office
• Changing the Association of Microsoft Office Document Types
• Setting the default file format