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I'm persevering with LibreOffice, but it does have its compatibility quirks. A few days back I was sent a .docx to proof and suggest changes. The requirement wa

I'm persevering with LibreOffice, but it does have its compatibility quirks. A few days back I was sent a .docx to proof and suggest changes. The requirement was to highlight added words in green and highlight queries in yellow. I used the latest version 7 of LibreOffice. When the doc went back to the creator - using Office 365 - they called to say that they could not select and remove the highlighting and had to delete and retype the coloured words.

resoluteteeth 6y ago
One quirk of Microsoft Word is that for historical reasons it has highlighting, which only allows a small number of specific colors, but also equivalent functionality in background shading for characters which allows arbitrary colors. IIRC, because this doesn't really make sense, libreoffice just has highlighting which allows arbitrary colors, but it can be confusing because it may by necessity become background shading when you export as a word file. Unfortunately, the UI for background shading is absolutely terrible in Word (there are different types of border/shading settings and you have to open the menu but then select the correct type to even see the current settings that are being applied) so people who don't know about it will be unlikely to figure out where it is or how to change it.
petepete 6y ago
Blaming an application for not having perfectly reverse-engineered a convoluted, confusing and incomplete spec is harsh. I admit it's frustrating but maybe the sender should be using a standard format.
- codygman 6y ago
  .docx is the standard format per the people that are probably your bosses wondering why you're making trouble not using the standard microsoft word. Unless one can supplant the current ".docx" is standard across industry I don't see how your expect others to use a different format. Personally, I wish odf were the default along with libreoffice.
  - petepete 6y ago
    If you need flawless docx support then Word is the way to go. LibreOffice can never do docx perfectly because the implementation is archaic and some parts of the spec aren't properly-documented.

resoluteteeth 6y ago

One quirk of Microsoft Word is that for historical reasons it has highlighting, which only allows a small number of specific colors, but also equivalent functionality in background shading for characters which allows arbitrary colors. IIRC, because this doesn't really make sense, libreoffice just has highlighting which allows arbitrary colors, but it can be confusing because it may by necessity become background shading when you export as a word file. Unfortunately, the UI for background shading is absolutely terrible in Word (there are different types of border/shading settings and you have to open the menu but then select the correct type to even see the current settings that are being applied) so people who don't know about it will be unlikely to figure out where it is or how to change it.

petepete 6y ago

Blaming an application for not having perfectly reverse-engineered a convoluted, confusing and incomplete spec is harsh. I admit it's frustrating but maybe the sender should be using a standard format.

codygman 6y ago
.docx is the standard format per the people that are probably your bosses wondering why you're making trouble not using the standard microsoft word. Unless one can supplant the current ".docx" is standard across industry I don't see how your expect others to use a different format. Personally, I wish odf were the default along with libreoffice.
- petepete 6y ago
  If you need flawless docx support then Word is the way to go. LibreOffice can never do docx perfectly because the implementation is archaic and some parts of the spec aren't properly-documented.