Updating to Office 2007

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wclass
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Updating to Office 2007

Post by wclass »

I have just updated my machine to Office 2007 and thought I'd share a few issues.

All seems to be OK - I had to uninstall and reinstall Flare after Office as it seemed to try and link to the previous version. This was no trouble. There might be a quicker way but the Flare installation was smooth.

When generating Word documents, if I set the output file name to "something.docx", the document generated is a docx file, but it claims to be in "compatibility mode". This is not a real problem, but I am curious as to why it is saved in this mode. I would expect that if I saved with a ".doc" extension. I have my Word settings set to save in the new mode. Can someone at Madcap confirm what the output format is - is it in 2007 or 2003 format?

Thanks,
Margaret
NorthEast
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Re: Updating to Office 2007

Post by NorthEast »

I think specifying a filename with extension will just set the filename, not the actual document format.

I just have the Output file set to (default) and the file generated is Word.xml. This files also opens in Compatibility mode.
RamonS
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Re: Updating to Office 2007

Post by RamonS »

Maybe the OOXML format that Flare generates isn't the one that is now official in W2k7, which by itself doesn't generate OOXML compliant documents either. It really is a format you should stay away from since no application currently supports the standard OOXML format.
lacastle
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Re: Updating to Office 2007

Post by lacastle »

Dave Lee wrote:I think specifying a filename with extension will just set the filename, not the actual document format.

I just have the Output file set to (default) and the file generated is Word.xml. This files also opens in Compatibility mode.

Is this still how v4 works? For some reason I'm getting .doc files when I generate a print output (with all the Flare defaults still set). I know I used to get a .xml file, but I didn't notice until today that now I get .doc. Could I have accidentally changed a default setting somewhere?
RamonS
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Re: Updating to Office 2007

Post by RamonS »

It is more likely that MadCap finally fixed this. A .doc file is tied to Office, whereas by default a .xml file is tied to IE. That means under default conditions the generated .xml file was opened in IE showing the markup rather than have it open in Word to show the rendered results of the fake OOXML. Although, isn't the file extensions for Office's fake OOXML files .docx?? I guess it won't matter really as long as it gets fed to Word.
lacastle
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Re: Updating to Office 2007

Post by lacastle »

Thanks. I don't mind it making a .doc (although I would expect .docx for Word 2007); I just wanted to make sure I didn't mess anything up.
SteveS
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Re: Updating to Office 2007

Post by SteveS »

I can't test at the moment, but I seem to recall when you set the document name you can set the extension as well - so name it output.doc or output.docx, depending on which you prefer. Of copurse, you can change the name output if you prefer :wink:
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LTinker68
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Re: Updating to Office 2007

Post by LTinker68 »

SteveS wrote:I can't test at the moment, but I seem to recall when you set the document name you can set the extension as well - so name it output.doc or output.docx, depending on which you prefer. Of copurse, you can change the name output if you prefer :wink:
Except if it was originally saved as a .docx then I think you have to embed the images before saving as a .doc file, otherwise you'll get missing images icons all over the document.
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RamonS
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Re: Updating to Office 2007

Post by RamonS »

Doesn't Flare automatically embed images? I thought that was only a problem when going from Word to somewhere else.
wclass
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Re: Updating to Office 2007

Post by wclass »

I have finally updated to Flare v4 and done some testing here - this seems to be working OK.
  • Leave your target output set to (default) and you will get a .DOC file (Word 2003, named after the target name)
  • Set the file name to "something.docx" and you will get a .DOCX file (Word 2007)
  • Set the file name to "something.doc" and you will get a .DOC file (Word 2003)
  • Set the file name to "something.xml" and you will get an XML file that opens in Word when you double-click (whatever version you have). If you look at the code, it links to the 2003 schema.
  • If you try for a .DOCM file (2007 macros enabled) you get ignored and the default .DOC is created (fair enough).
I could not repeat all my earlier v3.1 problems - there was another bug where if you changed just the output file name in a target and saved, well, it didn't always save (this was reported). Previously I may have thought the file format was at fault, when the other bug was in force.

Luckily, this bug has also been fixed.

EDIT: PS - the option to embed images is a totally separate issue. Whatever Word version you create, any images are set as links and you have to embed them if you want to send a single file rather than the file plus a folder full of images.
Margaret Hassall - Melbourne
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