Bug 53998

Summary: FILESAVE, MS-COMPAT: Two codepaths necessary, one 'pure' and one for MS Office compatability
Product: LibreOffice Reporter: Nicholas Shanks <nickshanks>
Component: LibreOfficeAssignee: Not Assigned <libreoffice-bugs>
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE    
Severity: normal CC: bfo.bugmail, erack
Priority: medium    
Version: 3.6.0.4 release   
Hardware: Other   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:
Crash report or crash signature: Regression By:
Bug Depends on:    
Bug Blocks: 53878    

Description Nicholas Shanks 2012-08-24 08:59:09 UTC 
I believe there should be two FILESAVE codepaths, a 'pure' one for adhering to the specs and writing sexy XML, and another for emitting more 'MS Office compatable' (yet still valid) OpenDocument files.

For example (bug #53997), MS Excel does not understand
<table:covered-table-cell table:number-columns-repeated="3"/>
and instead requires
<table:covered-table-cell/><table:covered-table-cell/><table:covered-table-cell/>

Both are valid code. Both can be read by LO and other free OpenDocument-supporting apps, yet only the latter works in Excel.

The default should be MS-compatable saved files. By saving files that MS Office can read without error (whilst still valid, just by using alternative XML) LO will be able to integrate more easily into existing Microsoft-dominated environments.

No more cries of "This '.ods' thing you sent me is corrupt, just send me an Excel file!" due to bugs/inadiquecies in MS's OpenDocument support.
Comment 1 bfoman (inactive) 2013-03-14 14:07:21 UTC 
CCing Calc expert from https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/FindTheExpert.
Please comment and set status accordingly.
Comment 2 Eike Rathke 2013-03-15 10:30:31 UTC 

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 53997 ***