Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 51525
Support legacy encodings when opening Microsoft Office documents (Ability to select code page on import of non-Unicode text/document)
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:31:33 UTC
When importing a text in "native" encoding and there is no info about valid code page, OO defaults to ANSI code page. Plain text is a good example. This lead to corruption of any non-ANSI chars. A dialog with manual selection of code page for import would help a lot. Also, some "invalid" MSWord docs might be Unicode, but contain emedded objects with non-Unicode text. So, recoding ANSI->Unicode->Native for selected text_range/ objects will be also very useful.
Hi pmike, thanks for using and supporting OpenOffice.org... I think this would be a nice feature... reassigned to requirements
already present since the very beginning. Use the filetype "Text (encoded)" and you will be prompted with a dialog to choose the charset. (And it is wrong that OOo defaults to ANSI) Regarding the "invalid doc files": File a seperate issue and attach one of those.
closing issue.
Well, text files can be imported with required code page (albeit manually). However, the main problem is lack of ability to specify code page for non-unicode documents like MSWord 5.0/6.0/7.0 docs as well as old Excel worksheets. So, I think this issue was closes too early and reopen it. Regarding import of plain text files. I suppose it's much better to get rid of "Text (encoded)" option and always offer to select code page. The only case to skip excoding dialog if text file have only ASCII-127 chars (all codes below 0x7f, very easy to check).
> Well, text files can be imported with required code page (albeit manually). There is no way other than to manually choose the codepage if the one from the locale doesn't match. > However, the main problem is lack of ability to specify code page for > non-unicode documents like MSWord 5.0/6.0/7.0 docs as well as old Excel > worksheets. Please provide sample documents. > Regarding import of plain text files. I suppose it's much better to get rid of > "Text (encoded)" option and always offer to select code page. [...] No. This will pi** off users that use plaintext a lot and are not english speakers.
>There is no way other than to manually choose the codepage if the one from the locale doesn't match. > No. This will pi** off users that use plaintext a lot and are not english speakers. MS office is able (sometimes) to choose code page correctly. But it still offers dialog to confirm its autoselection. It might be that active user locale can help? > Please provide sample documents. File 'pricelist.xls' is an old Excel document (v5.0 I suppose). OO can't import russian (cp-1251) chars from this file. File 'pricelist.ods' is the required result (corrected).
Created attachment 27764 [details] Excel 5.0 doc with CP-1251 chars
Created attachment 27765 [details] OO Calc doc with _expected_ result
I misunderstood "text document" with plain text... Sorry.
OpenOffice.org Issue Tracker - Feedback Request. The Issue you raised is currently assigned to 'Requirements' pending review, but has not been updated within the last 3 years. Please consider re-testing with one of the latest versions of OOo, as the problem(s) may have already been addressed. Either use the recent stable version: http://download.openoffice.org/index.html or consider trying the new OOo 3 BETA (still in testing): http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/ Please report back the outcome so this Issue may be Closed or Progressed as necessary - otherwise it may be Resolved as Invalid in the future. You may also wish to search for (and note) any duplicates of this Issue that may have advanced further by checking the Issue Tracker: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/query.cgi Many thanks, Andrew Cleaning-up and Closing old Issues as part of: ~ The Grand Bug Squash, pre v3 ~ http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/announcementbeta.html