Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 125667
Question Marks when application form filled in and saved as .doc
Last modified: 2017-05-20 10:11:36 UTC
Created attachment 83975 [details] Application form filled in in OpenOffice 4.1.1. Filling in an application form in Open Office and saving it as a .doc. Everything looks fine. However, when it is opened in MSWord 2010 there are question marks where spaces and numbers should be. This has not happened with the previous versions of OpenOffice.
Created attachment 83976 [details] Screen grabs of errors showing up on the form This is an example what it showing up on the form when it is opened in MSWord as a .doc. Applicants who do not have MSWord can complete the application form in OpenOffice saving as a .doc. However when it is opened up by someone using MSWord the document is not intelligible.
This seems to be a compatibility issue with MSWord (character encoding perhaps) and not OpenOffice. I'd suggest you contact Microsoft Support or try asking the OpenOffice community support here: https://forum.openoffice.org/
Not an AOO defect.
I do not understand this answer as our applicants have been using AAO up to 4.0 with no problems opening documents in MSWord. Then the issue occurred with AAO 4.1 and the same version of MSWord. Are you saying that nothing changed with AAO 4.1 so there should be no issue? This answer is disappointing as I had already searched the forums both on AOO and on Microsoft and found nothing.
There's more to the problem than just question marks being displayed in place of spaces and numbers. When the sample document is opened with Word 2000 or the MS Word Viewer, the name in section 1.1 is displayed incorrectly. The space in the name is replaced by double question marks and the current date is displayed in place of the apostrophe! This has to be a bug in AOO 4.1.0 and AOO 4.1.1. When the sample document is saved with AOO 4.0.1, the correct characters are displayed when the document is opened with MS Word 2000 and the MS Word Viewer. Nothing changed in the MS products on my system. Something must have changed in AOO 4.1.0 and AOO 4.1.1 that's now causing the characters to be displayed incorrectly when opened by the MS products. When the document is saved with AOO 4.0.1, it's size is reduced from 122 KB to 114 KB, but when saved with AOO 4.1.1, it's size remains at 122 KB.