Open office document must run under Win32
 

I wrote a short story about using computers using Open Office. I saved a copy to my usb drive. When I tried to open it again it was all garbled code. One line of text said: must run under Win32. I can't find Win32 and I cant read my story now. How do I run this thing in Win 32? What does that mean? Do I open Win32 first then Open Office. Or the other way around. Anybody out there know? eeepc900 xandros

thnx pattypuss52

Hi, I can hardly understand what you are trying to do. Did you try to open a windowsprogram with Linux???

If you have an OpenOffice document, regardless if created on a Windows or on a Linux computer, you can open it with OpenOffice. But you must have OpenOffice installed, the version for Windows, if it is a Windowscomputer or the version for Linux if it is a Linuxcomputer.

Can you start the OpenOffice program on the Linuxcomputer?
Can you see the files on the USB-drive in a filemanager?

Markus

open office must run on win32
 

Markush; thanks for your reply. I am able to run open office 2.0 on my xandros eeepc900 just fine. But somehow the document i was working on got converted to image file code i think. The pages i wrote (they're on the usb drive still) are unreadable as text. There is one small line that says "this program must be run under win32". I don't know if i've converted my text to code or an image file. or an image file to text.
One thing i noticed: The name of the (two) messed up files are
indataset.exe and indataset.odt they are both in a "recycler" folder. i have no idea what this means. do you have any insight?
any help would be gratefully acknowledged! thanks 5sugarnoodle2

open office must run on win32
 

markush; i forgot to tell you in my last post; i'm wrote the story on my linux netbook and i saved it to the usb drive with that machine:eeepc900 xandros. i'm posting now with my pc with windows xp 6.2. i haven't tried to open the file on the p.c. because i don't know what will happen. pp52

mh, *.odt files are the OpenOffice Writer files, this looks good. *.exe are Windows executeables.

Markus

I'd make a backup of the file before opening it in Windows. If you have OpenOffice installed on Windows you may try to open the files.

Markus

For the .odt...

The .odt file should open in OpenOffice Writer. Download and boot a linux live-cd that includes OpenOffice, and try to open that .odt file specifying OpenOffice. OpenOffice will try to identify what to use for a program.

You will at least know that it is the file that is corrupt and unreadable and not any copy of OpenOffice that is at fault. You could also download and install OpenOffice for Windows on your Windows system.

If you can open the file in Writer you can then store it again as a .doc file that can be read by Windows Word.

Markush; I can open the files but so far none of these things have managed to translate the garbled code on all the pages to a readable text. I've been opening them from the start in Open Office and word. The files open...they're just not readable. I did notice a drop-down box that said something about unicode8 do i need to change that to a text language like English?

thanks 5sn2

thorkelljarl; followed your instructions. have a window :

ASCI Filter Options ?????

properties
character set unicode (utf-8) ????
default font dejavu sans condensed okay
language english okay

thorkelljarl; tried changing character set still get code only slightly different. still has one line of text: this program must be run under Win32. ?????

thanks 5sn2

thorkylljarl; I got a filter selection to pop up with hundreds of possibilities. Also I think the master document is a microsoft office document. home/user/D:/RECYCLER

? so the doc is the trash can ?????

Hi -

Just to clarify:

1. Any document you write with Open Office should be readable with Open Office on any platform - including Windows or Linux.

2. A .odt file is a document. You should be able to read it with Open Office.

3. An .exe file is NOT a document - it's an executable.
You do *not* want to "open" it with Open Office. You want to "run" it on Windows.
For your purposes, you want to IGNORE it. Focus on the .odt file.

4. If you're on a Windows PC, and you don't have a copy of OpenOffice, then download and install it.
You'll also need Java.

5. Once you have OpenOffice, try to "open" your .odt file.
The odds are very good that you'll be able to read your story :)

No guarantee...

If the document is readable, it should be readable in OpenOffice. .odt is the file form for documents stored by Writer. OpenOffice seems to be giving you choices in an attempt to open a file it has difficulty in identifying and reading. The .odt file may just be too corrupt to read.

Since you have a system with Windows, you could try to run that .exe file to see what it does, but it does not have a file form that says it is any sort of text file. Is it something you already had stored on the flash drive?

If you decide that your story is lost, you might make a test document and store it to check your procedure and the health of the USB flash drive you used. You have to be careful to unmount a USB drive that you have written to before you remove it; the changes made are not finally stored until then. If you have frequent problems with that USB flash, try to format it. If that isn't a remedy, discard it. Some flash drives are just flaky.

paulsm4 gives a good summary of the situation. Did you try downloading OpenOffice for your Windows machine and attempt to open the .odt file to see what happens? Good Luck

OpenOffice Writer files are zip files and can be unzipped. Inside the zip file, all (?) the text is in a file called content.xml which can be read using any XML browser including web browsers.