Windows MS Word text mysteriously altered when opened as RTF

[Norman Kline]

A Windows 2007 doc was sent to me. I open it as an RTF .Yikes! the RTF contains a paragraph not in the doc file! A possible clue: The Windows file had been revised 2 or 3 times and the doc paragraph that is different from my RTF file is blue on the screen. The sender is angry because he thinks i changed his stuff. I didn't. Any ideas about what happened? Maybe the doc file was not revised properly? I am not familiar with MS Word.

[martin]

Before we try to dissect what might be going on, let me make sure I understand the situation exactly:

A Windows 2007 doc was sent to me. I open it as an RTF .Yikes!

Do you mean that you received a Word file in DOC format, used Nisus Writer to import it, and then saved the result as an RTF file? Or do you mean that you received the file in both DOC and RTF format, and you choose to open the RTF in Nisus Writer?

[Norman Kline]

I received sender's message as docx,not as RTF. I used Nisus Pro to open the file as RTF. (As a test, I also opened it with Text Edit and with Neo Office-- same result, an altered message.) Very weird, seems impossible.) Thanks for your interest.

My goal is to prevent this from happening again. All of my customers send messages as MS Word .docx, which I open with Nisus Pro, saved as RTF. Then after minor corrections, I place into an InDesign file -- all in Macintosh.

[Norman Kline]

Martin, Thanks for your interest. Please consider trying to replicate the problem. I have attached the DOC file. Compare the result if you open it as is with the result if you import it with Nisus Pro as RTF.

[Hamid]

The paragraph in the original docx file placed inside a floating text box is missing in the converted rtf file because the importer used by Nisus Writer does not support floating content of doc and docx files.
If the sender saves the docx file as rtf before sending it to you, the floating content will be preserved when you open the file in Nisus Writer.

[Norman Kline]

Hamid, many thanks. Apparently the creator of the DOC file was trying to format the text before sending it to me.

[martin]

Thanks for the example file Norman. The differences you're seeing are due to various levels of success when importing DOCX files. The paragraph in question is contained in a floating text box, which is something more exotic than regular content, and isn't as well supported by various apps.

As you observed, TextEdit for some reason imports this floating paragraph as being partially blue. While NeoOffice and Nisus Writer Pro (NWP) miss it entirely. That's not too surprising, because NWP actually uses LibreOffice to import DOC and DOCX files. LibreOffice and NeoOffice are both based on OpenOffice, so they would all have similar DOCX import capabilities. Hopefully their DOCX import improves over time, so NWP will get better with these kinds of documents.

As Hamid says, you will achieve the best results when passing documents to NWP if the Word user saves the file as RTF. That's NWP native file format, and if you see any discrepancies we would like to fix them directly.

[Norman Kline]

Thanks. From now on, I will be aware that converting doc and docx files should be handled with care.

I appreciate your reply. I used it in my regrets to my customer and assured him that what appeared to be my error will not happen again.

Again, thank you. I value NWP highly and use it in many ways.