Dear Hugh, You say that Microsoft [Office] has taken over all your OpenOffice files. That suggests it is the default productivity application suite. If you genuinely have "no use whatsoever" for Microsoft office, uninstalling it should free you from it and cause your documents to be opened by another app, e.g. OpenOffice or LibreOffice, provided that a suitable app is available, but I can’t remember if the available or selected app automatically becomes the new default app or if you have to set the default.
I say uninstalling MS Office "should free you from it" because I do not know if a MS Windows computer will allow you to uninstall MS Office, perhaps Mr Gates may insist that you keep MS Office so that he can keep billing you for it because you have to use it because it keeps preventing you from using any alternative. I had MS Office on my Mac under an Education licence for a few years, because it was required for my children’s schoolwork, but I uninstalled it when they no longer needed it (and I was glad to be rid of it), but I don’t know if you can uninstall it from a Windows computer. However, you should not have to uninstall MS Office unless you really do want to get rid of it, you should be able to open your documents with any available alternate application. On the Mac this is done by right-clicking on the document’s icon, then scrolling in the selection window to “Open With” and selecting the app you want to use from the list of available applications, or selecting “Other …” to open the Applications folder if the app you want to use is not listed in the initial selection window, or selecting “App Store …” if the app you want is not installed, then download and install the app, or in the case of OO or LO go instead to the download website to get the app. The previous paragraph outlines how to open a document on the Mac with a non-default app (unless the default app is the only one available). I assume that Windows must offer some equivalent procedure. It is a long time since I have reset the default app for a document on the Mac, so I would probably have to look up how to do it now, which I assume you should be able to do as easily as me, and if you are using Windows it will almost certainly be a different procedure anyway, so there would be no point in me telling you how to do it on the Mac, but surely Windows cannot be so inferior to the Mac that it doesn't let you set a default app when more than one of your installed apps is able to open a document? I prefer the Mac for its desktop, dock, and filing system, the OS itself is all but irrelevant, because whether you use Mac, Linux, or Windows they all do pretty much the same thing, they just go about it a bit differently, so what you can do on one you should be able to do on another. In the unlikely event that you discover that your problem actually is in OpenOffice rather than in the OS’s default app configuration, you could try LibreOffice, a popular alternative to OpenOffice. I have used OO routinely on the Mac for many years, and I occasionally used LO on Linux (their documents are interchangeable), and I have recently switched from OO to LO on the Mac because the last OO update seemed to introduce some glitches. Some features are implemented better on OO than on LO, and some are better on LO than OO, and a couple of LO’s ways of doing things still annoy me even though I should be used to them by now, but LO is at least as good as OO overall, so if you are having problems with OO it could be worth trying LO, but I doubt that your problem is in the app, you will almost certainly find it is in the default app selection. Regards, Peter. > On 18 Oct 2022, at 10:34 pm, Hugh McEachern <hugh.mceach...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Attn: Open Office, > > We are unable to access our open office files on our computer. It keeps > giving a error message. > I have downloaded the latest open office but it still wont work. > Microsoft word seems to have taken over all our open office files and I have > absolutely no use > whats so ever for Microsoft. > > Thanks > Hugh McEachern > HMIC Canada > > > > > > <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient> > Virus-free.www.avast.com > <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient> > <x-msg://1/#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
