Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 2261
"Bullets" exported from OO become "Numberings" in Word
Last modified: 2003-09-08 16:56:16 UTC
When a Bullet Point is added to an Open Office document it appears as a somewhat skinny grey box with a small dot inside it. When exported to a Word .doc file and loaded into Word they come out as tiny pin points. When highlighted it becomes apparent that Word considers them a "Numbering". In reverse a bullet point in a Word document imported into OO shows as a much larger grey box with a larger black dot inside. However press return immediately after one and the next Bullet is a standard OO skinny one.
Reassigned to Michael.
The bullets are just displayed a bit different on the two systems. But it is the same content stored in the files. That word considers them a number is no wonder. That´s because it is exported like this. Otherwise we won´t be able to put all Writer´s bullet- and numbering-levels into Word format.
Closed, because not a bug.
I've no idea if this will be received since this OR has been closed but... how can you say this is not a bug ! "The bullets are just displayed a bit different on the two systems." is a complete understatement. Big bold bullets are happily imported from Word to Open Office as something else other than Open Office bullets (since for the life of me I have been unable to duplicate them exactly without importing one first !). If this same document is now saved to Word format these bullets become silly little pin points with no identation or space before the following text ! Moreover, the same thing happens to nice rosy bullet points in an origional Open Office document that is exported to Word ! Furthermore Word doesn't appear just make them all "Numberings", but somehow distinguishes between bullet points and genuine numberings. Shouldn't we all just pack up now since Word and Open Office are "just a bit different" and therefore should be able to live without importing / exporting each others files !
I also hit this bug. In my case, standart bullets were changed to something very obscure, I'll attach a picture. If it were a small difference then that would be OK. But that funny symbols means that I cannot export documents to MS Office at all - my colleagues will laugh at me & my OO usage.
Created attachment 1036 [details] This is two OO bullet styles (standart and big ones) exported to MS Office
This looks like a duplicate of 3012...or vice versa. I'm also seeing this bug. When using any of the bullet styles available in OO, none of them convert properly to MS Word. The normal size bullets appear in MS as a bullet with the number 10 in the middle of it. The larger bullets appear as other weird characters in MS Word.
Is anyone working on this? This is a bug which is preventing users from migrating away from MS Word. I think it deserves some attention.
I too am having trouble with bullets. A document created in Word 97 and imported to OO looks great but the bullets just don't print. The formatting is fine, just an empty space.
The issue, when you load the document into winword 97, it thinks that the paragraph is numbered, not bulleted. What's on the screen is an odd-looking (and odder-printing) bullet paragraph. Now, if you turn numbering off for the para, then bulletting, Word is happy again. But, StarOffice 5.2 didn't have this issue.
Created attachment 1737 [details] Showing bullet problem also in help system
I have just created a new attachment showing incorrect bullets also in the help system. The thing about showing strange bullet symbols in windows platforms seems to be rather related to choosing an incorrect dingbats font, or an incorrect encoding...
Two seperate things here people, one is bullets not working in word. This is because the starsymbol font is not available under word if it has not been installed, and private area symbols are used in this font. So some sort of workaround is required. Most people's problems here are with exporting to word, so see issue 4387 for details on that specific issue, and issue 2192 for even more details. I'm considering an enhancement to the exporter at the moment to tackle this. The second issue is that the starsymbol font is not working in writer, this is a true OOo bug, the screenshot in the later part of the issue has nothing whatsoever to do with exporting to word, as indeed it is displayed in the help so that is likely to be issue 4516. Read issue 4387. Being "numbered" vs "bulleted" is a distinction that only truly exists in the UI and to users, its not a true deep distinction. Likewise in writer "outline lists" vs "bulleted" is also a fairly artifical distinction. *** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 2192 ***
split them from font embedding
Going to solve this a different way. *** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 3839 ***
If any one is interested there is a work around 1) Apply "bullets" with the "Bullets On/Off" button 2) Edit "Numberings/Bullets" 3) In the "Options" tab: ensure "Numbering" is set to "Bullets", set the "Character Style" to "none", press the "Character ..." button; ensure "Font" is set to "Open Symbols" and "Subset" is set to "Geometric Shapes", then select the biggest blob you can !! (9th in on the top row !). OK out of all that. 4) DON'T forget to put a space character as the first character after each bullet. :-)
Yes if you use a font for your bullets that will exist on a normal windows machine the problem goes away because a missing starsymbol font on the destination word using machine is the problem. The changes for SRX643 try and map the starsymbol font to those normally installed windows symbol fonts when saving to .doc and .wmf
Improved in OO 643.
Hmmm ! not really !
you are partly right. The original problem, which was described in the beginning of the issue, is improved with oo643. The issue you described on 06/14/2002 may appear as related to, but it isn't really. The Opensymbol font offers many more symbols than the "Symbol" font does. So I don't think it is possible for Writer to export these characters properly as "bulleted list" to Word. A new outlined list with a kind of user-defined bullets has to be generated. CMC, could you please give an additional comment on it? Thanks!
Whats the "not really" problem, that bulleted lists are exported as "outline lists" ? They are outline lists, each of the 9/10 levels has different amounts of indent, so thats the correct export. Or is one of the bullet conversions not a good match ?
The "not really" part is just that Bullet Point Lists simply do not export to Word. End of story really :-) I assume that when Word makes a bullet point it "assumes" that the font with that particular character will be available. I have never seen Word either use another character or refuse to insert a bullet because a particular font is not installed. This may be a crap way of doing it but it may be necassary to consider hard coding this character value on export to Word !!! At least the bullets would be readable. Or maybe shipping the particular font with OOo (assuming it doesn't conflict with DCMA, DRM, CBPTA, SSSCA, Palladium, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all !!!)