At 13:39 04/02/2016 +0000, Clair Sutton wrote:
I use OpenOfficeCalc to do my accounts work and have just realised I
can make a template to use, from year to year, instead of copying
last year's and emptying it of the old data (Yep, that is what I used to do!).
However, I noticed that the Calc documents I made for this year's
accounts, from the templates, don't appear as the other ones do. The
document seems the same when I get into it, but, in the list of
documents in the folder, the other ones have the 'page with seagulls
on it' icon and the name, and the new ones I just made using the
template have a 'blank page with corner missing' icon and the name
and when I double click on it I have to choose which program I want
to open it with. (Then when I choose Calc it opens ok, but the
dialog box has a 'tickbox' in it which I can usually choose to
'Always Open with this' and this doesn't work either - like, I can't tick it).
I am presuming that I've done something wrong, but since I know very
little about spreadsheets (you may have guessed) I wondered if you
could tell me how I can fix it please?
I think this is fairly straightforward, and that the problem has
nothing to do with your practice of (sensibly) using a template. It
may have started at around that time by coincidence. (And you get a
Brownie Point for your clear explanation of the problem!)
OpenOffice has a strange option in the Save As... dialogue box. Near
the bottom, you will see an "Automatic file name extension" tick box.
Has this become unticked? If it has, you will be saving documents in
the correct format, but the file names will not be getting the proper
extension. So a spreadsheet document will be called just "name"
rather than "name.ods". Without the extension, your operating system
- apparently Windows - will not know what application to invoke by
default if you double-click the document icon to open the document.
This means that it will not know what icon to use and will display a
default icon instead. It also means that if you challenge Windows to
open the document by double-clicking the icon, it will ask you to
select your chosen application. The "always use" option allows you to
associate a file extension with an application on the fly, but this
will be greyed out precisely because there is no such extension present.
The solution is very easy: just tick that box in the Save As...
dialogue. Once you have done this, your choice will stick - just as
the absence of a tick has stuck, causing you the current problem. For
existing files, you can either rename them to add the .ods extension
or else simply save the documents (even under the same name) with the
option ticked. The rogue copies can then be deleted, of course.
I trust this helps.
Brian Barker
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