Document Could Not Be Opened

[ntx]

I have been searching OOO-related sites for additional information, and hey, I think I found a clue !

in
http://oooug.jp/faq/index.php?faq%2F4%2F1288
(in Japanese )

a user called tats filed a bug report on 2008-10-16 called "Can't open file in OS X depending on foreign language setting".

He says :
- He uses Leopard on an intel machine with Japanese environment installed (note : this is default setting)
- Using system pref > language he sets "format" to australian english
- When he tries to open a file with japanese name, an error occurs with "/Users/***/***.xls does not exist" dialog
- When he tries to save a file with japanese name, it becomes "???.xls"
- If he sets language preferences to "japan" errors go away
- Language setting within OOO has nothing to do with this glitch

and several users confirmed the report on both intel/ppc systems with various builds. tats says in his last post on 2008-10-18 14:46:13 that (this bug) seems to be rooted in OOO itself.

related page : http://ja.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=95104
(english)

--

I could also confirm tats' report - If I change "language/format" to "Japanese" (rather than my own custom setting) in system pref pane and relaunch NWP, NWP can open any .doc file happily.

I still need this bug to be fixed, as custom format setting is more important to me than new feature of NWP1.2

[martin]

Perhaps it might be valuable to split the threads to discuss each one separately? What's your take on this point, Martin?

I think keeping the discussion in one thread is probably the most useful. We'll be looking into both issues.

My NWP 1.2 can open ANY file created by NWP. Situations here are summarized :

NWP 1.2 can open .doc files as far as :
1. The file was created by NWP, or
2. File path dos not contain exotic characters (incl. ƒ, é, and chinese/japanese characters, but excl space or @)

and "loading additional filters..." dialog pops up only when the problem occurs.

That's because when you save a ".doc" from NWP it actually creates a ".doc" with RTF codes inside. This is fundamentally different than when one creates a binary ".doc" file, which you can do using NWP's "Export As" menu. Does the latter binary ".doc" also open without trouble in NWP?

As Cris has said, we've been unable to reproduce both problems described here. Once we have an application that can help us collect more information on this problem, we may contact those experiencing the problems to do some testing.

[martin]

If I change "language/format" to "Japanese" (rather than my own custom setting) in system pref pane and relaunch NWP, NWP can open any .doc file happily.

That's great to hear, many thanks for your sleuthing! That probably doesn't explain Cris' problem, but that's one of two issues identified- a good start.

[CrisB]

This MS-Word file not opening problem in NWP 1.3 was resolved when Martin suggested first dragging such files to the desktop. It turns out that it's not just a question of somewhat unusual characters in the file name, they also cause a problem in folder names in the path which contain a MS-Word file.

So, for me, dragging the file to the desktop and opening it there resolves the problem. And having saved the resultant translated file, then unusual characters completely cease to be an issue. Thanks, Martin.