Topic: MS Word/Sun StarOffice HELP!! (Read 5160 times)

Malystryx_XC · « **Reply #20 on:** January 13, 2004, 03:57:45 pm »

Just in general, you may want to try out Open Office instead of Star Office. Open Office is completely free and is actually the base that Sun has used to create their Star Office. Not only do I use it at home but have recently begun introducing it to workstations at the office. A lot of nice features and works well in conjunction with MS Office. It's on version 1.1 now and although not quite at the point of completely replacing Microsoft yet, it does hold serious promise.

I can tell you that with Open Office you have the ability to choose which file types it should create an association for (ie. Word, Excel, etc) aside from it's own file type. I normally uncheck the MS Office associations so it does not alter those and have not had a single incident of it corrupting file associations or otherwise damaging long file name support.

If long file name support is truly broken on your system you might have to do a full OS reinstall to fix it. I've had that problem once trying to uninstall a trojan horse detecting app and it completely broke long file name support in Win2k. No matter what I did I could not restore it so I had to reinstall the system.

If the problem simply lies with the way your associations are setup to call the appropriate application (which is more likely the case) it should be able to be fixed quite easily by pulling up Windows Explorer and under "Tools>Folder Options>File Types" look for the affected file extension (xls or doc for example) and make sure it is set to use MS Excel or MS Word. If it is not, then simply click change and choose the appropriate application from the list.

The link to get Open Office is: Open Office

For the record, I used Star Office 6 a couple years back on Windows 2000 and never had a problem with it screwing up file associations.

Sirgod · « **Reply #21 on:** January 13, 2004, 04:02:30 pm »

Thanks for that link Malystryx_XC, I might check It out For my wifes PC, after I get off of hers here.

sounds very promising.

stephen

Malystryx_XC · « **Reply #22 on:** January 13, 2004, 04:16:37 pm »

Quote:

Thanks for that link Malystryx_XC, I might check It out For my wifes PC, after I get off of hers here.

sounds very promising.

stephen

No problem, hope you enjoy working with it!

If you are interested, check out their development notes on the site for their next release 2.0. From the sounds of it, the finished product will easily be a competitive match for MS Office and will even have a more robust database engine (than OO1.1) to compete with MS Access.

The only thing I don't see planned in Open Office is a mail client to compete with Outlook but I don't think that is really a big deal since a company called Ximian (sp?) has a product called Evolution which is used pretty extensively in Linux distros and is a near duplicate of Outlook. I believe they have also added support for Windows now as well.

E_Look · « **Reply #24 on:** January 13, 2004, 05:12:47 pm »

Malystryx, I fear you and Sethan are right about long filename support being broken. The funny thing is that this happens only when I doubleclick a MS Word or Excel file icon to launch both the app and the file together. If I start the app first, then I can call up any file with no problem.

Also, I think you are right about the associations between StarOffice and the MS Office applications. I unthinkingly allowed it to automatically open Word and Excel files during the installation process. By the way, it's StarOffice 7 via a download.

As to Open Office and Star Office, I heard that there is virtually no difference. I think StarOffice comes with a font or two extra. Still I qualify for Sun's free academic d/l, so I got it. Now that the long filename support is broken, I guess it's kind of a moot point.

Also, what were some of the things you tried to restore long filename support short of a full OS reinstall? I giving this current machine to my kid shortly and I don't want any problems of this type on it when I give it to him. (I was thinking of just moving my files 'n' stuff off and leaving the OS intact).

E_Look · « **Reply #25 on:** January 13, 2004, 05:16:37 pm »

Sethan- long filenames ARE STILL good... so long as I launch the application first and then open the file, there's no problems. It's, again, only when I try to launch from the file icon in a directory (uh, folder... I forgot it's Windows) window. And long directory names are okay too, again, so long as there are no spaces in it. Again, weird.

E_Look · « **Reply #27 on:** January 17, 2004, 11:53:52 pm »

Sirgod, Sethan, Malystryx_XC, in order of appearance:

Thanks for the input. I wound up having to uninstall and reinstall to get it to recognize spaces in the filenames and path again, just as you all said. What a pain.

Anyhow, this Win98/Celeron 466/on-board ATI Rage Pro off the the shelf HP system is going to be handed off (or is it lateralled... nah, handed off: he's just a kid) to my son, along with the MS Office in it, as soon as I can go tomorrow and get an RJ-45 cable to hook the 'Net up to my new...

... Win XP/Athlon 64 3000+/ATI Radeon 9700 Pro system I just scratch built myself! I finally was able to enjoy a test skirmish in SFC3 (after al these years)!

And, I'm going with StarOffice. I might just load in Office 97 (the only one I own... I don't feel like springing about $200-ish for MS Office 2003. I got also a big, fast SATA drive, but I'm going to do with it what I'll do with my weight- keep it light, not loaded up, clean, and neat...
... yeah, right!

Now this is bad- going OT in an OT forum post, especially my own!!!

E_Look · « **Reply #30 on:** January 13, 2004, 01:54:33 pm »

Well, it isn't as bad as I might have made it sound, but upon installation of StarOffice, my file icons (in my folders or directories) no longer automatically open in Word or Excel as they used to. The app opens, but then it hangs and I have to manually go to the "File" list and open the file from there.

One obvious symptom is the error message given by Word or Excel- that it can't find the file. It turns out that somehow, they are now breaking the path into two parts- the folder/directory address and then the filename. The error message comes up twice, one for not finding the file because it has only part of the path, and the second for not finding the file using the second half of the path. Weird.

I wonder how I can make these apps read the paths correctly again. Anyone here have any ideas or solutions?

Thanks, y'all.

Sirgod · « **Reply #31 on:** January 13, 2004, 02:10:29 pm »

It sounds like the file assosiations are escew. What OS are you on?

stephen

E_Look · « **Reply #32 on:** January 13, 2004, 02:40:10 pm »

Hey, Sirgod! Thanks for the reply.

I'm using Win98, FIRST edition , but I've found one more detail:

The exact problem is that these two apps are not able now to read spaces in filenames or directory names. If it sees a space, it assumes it is the end of the filename!

Sethan · « **Reply #33 on:** January 13, 2004, 02:47:03 pm »

Sounds like long filename support may be broken. I bet it doesn't read file names longer than 8 characters properly either.

Malystryx_XC · « **Reply #35 on:** January 13, 2004, 03:57:45 pm »

Just in general, you may want to try out Open Office instead of Star Office. Open Office is completely free and is actually the base that Sun has used to create their Star Office. Not only do I use it at home but have recently begun introducing it to workstations at the office. A lot of nice features and works well in conjunction with MS Office. It's on version 1.1 now and although not quite at the point of completely replacing Microsoft yet, it does hold serious promise.

I can tell you that with Open Office you have the ability to choose which file types it should create an association for (ie. Word, Excel, etc) aside from it's own file type. I normally uncheck the MS Office associations so it does not alter those and have not had a single incident of it corrupting file associations or otherwise damaging long file name support.

If long file name support is truly broken on your system you might have to do a full OS reinstall to fix it. I've had that problem once trying to uninstall a trojan horse detecting app and it completely broke long file name support in Win2k. No matter what I did I could not restore it so I had to reinstall the system.

If the problem simply lies with the way your associations are setup to call the appropriate application (which is more likely the case) it should be able to be fixed quite easily by pulling up Windows Explorer and under "Tools>Folder Options>File Types" look for the affected file extension (xls or doc for example) and make sure it is set to use MS Excel or MS Word. If it is not, then simply click change and choose the appropriate application from the list.

The link to get Open Office is: Open Office

For the record, I used Star Office 6 a couple years back on Windows 2000 and never had a problem with it screwing up file associations.

Sirgod · « **Reply #36 on:** January 13, 2004, 04:02:30 pm »

Thanks for that link Malystryx_XC, I might check It out For my wifes PC, after I get off of hers here.

sounds very promising.

stephen

E_Look · « **Reply #39 on:** January 13, 2004, 05:12:47 pm »

Malystryx, I fear you and Sethan are right about long filename support being broken. The funny thing is that this happens only when I doubleclick a MS Word or Excel file icon to launch both the app and the file together. If I start the app first, then I can call up any file with no problem.

Also, I think you are right about the associations between StarOffice and the MS Office applications. I unthinkingly allowed it to automatically open Word and Excel files during the installation process. By the way, it's StarOffice 7 via a download.

As to Open Office and Star Office, I heard that there is virtually no difference. I think StarOffice comes with a font or two extra. Still I qualify for Sun's free academic d/l, so I got it. Now that the long filename support is broken, I guess it's kind of a moot point.

Also, what were some of the things you tried to restore long filename support short of a full OS reinstall? I giving this current machine to my kid shortly and I don't want any problems of this type on it when I give it to him. (I was thinking of just moving my files 'n' stuff off and leaving the OS intact).

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Topic: MS Word/Sun StarOffice HELP!! (Read 5160 times)