Hi there, I have openoffice 2.0 on my gentoo machine and am currently unable to open files created in M$ office XP. It seems to open up with formatting junk and HEX. I was wondering if there was an update or a fix which can open the latest versions saved in office without having to downgrade with the "save as.. Office98" option in windows? what programs do people use to read and edit the latest documents made in the latest Office suite? I normally create files with openoffice no problem but my sister still uses windows on her machine and its a pain when I review her files on my machine.

It's good practise to create pdfs out of MS office docs, unless you need to modify them. Smaller size (or has been this far), works better. Have you tried Abiword too? I'm not sure if it does better than OO2, but it's worth a try..

MS is just hitting heads against wall, they should accept the situation and start using a common (open source) format; it wouldn't stop them from evolving their apps or anything, it would just spare the users everywhere.

From OpenOffice.org Writer, Tools menu, select Options, Load/Save. Go through those options, expecially the Microsoft Office options. There some check boxes to check so that files loaded will be correctly converted by OpenOffice; same with files saved.

I had problems with my wifes Word docs (win xp) until I got that straightened out. No probs since then.