The command below can be faster
libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf *.docx
When you accidentally open a photo in photoshop instead of the default photo viewer
When you realize Photoshop is the default photo viewer.
Seriously. Another one is Xcode on macOS will make so many file types its default. And changing them back is no trivial matter.
I digress… thanks for coming to my ted talk.
People have long load times opening word docs? How old is your system?
Most of my recent experience with office is on corporate laptops loaded down with enterprise management software, antivirus, etc, so I relate to this meme.
After being on Linux desktops for both work and home for the last few years, it’s jarring how sluggish corporate windows laptops can be, even with new and fast hardware.
… Or how new? My work laptop is a core i7 from a couple years ago with 32gb of ram and the latest office 365. Any office program will take a good minute or two to open. I believe there’s additional drive encryption going on, but the load times are atrocious.
That’s… abnormal.
Not really. Third party encryption/live antivirus threat/scan etc can completely destroy performance on a computer, when you have a few tasks running. Not the first time I see this issue. And it’s been mentioned elsewhere in this thread as well.
It’s still not normal. Core i5, 16G laptop, in a corporate environment with Intune, bitlocker, defender for endpoint. Word opens in 4 seconds after cold boot. I don’t use my laptop much but it isn’t as slow as this post makes out.
W10 or 11 out of curiosity?
My thoughts too. I’ve always hated pdfs because they struggle to load, while word opened fine.
One caveat… online browser based word processing can’t handle truly long docs, the browser chokes on it. Maybe people are running into that if companies take everything to the cloud with word 365 and google docs.
As a long form writer, I hate online word processors.
I got sick of loading times for Acrobat reader so ended up installing SumatraPDF for something more lightweight for general viewing. I only use Acrobat now if I’m planning to print the PDF.
can’t handle truly long docs, the browser chokes on it.
Well, I dare you: open a >3000 page docx document then do the same with a pdf…
My personal pet peeve is SharePoint and Teams trying to default to their two separate web clients. I have Word open right there. Stop trying to render the whole application again in Javascript just for opening a 35kb file.
Right? They even let us change the default… Between opening in teams and web. Not desktop. Even though you can tell it to open in desktop once
The option to open direct to desktop app was locked behind enterprise licensing. It’s stupid. You can set a registry value to fool Teams into thinking you have Apps for Enterprise
When you accidentally open a mailto link in windows
I think Ubuntu tries to open Thunderbird which is pretty annoying too.
For dealing with .docx files I would recommend OnlyOffice. It’s a FOSS office suite, but unlike LibreOffice, it uses the .docx format natively.
I read a comment about this a while ago, but basically under the hood LibreOffice does everything in .odt etc. and it has to convert the files first, which can lead to the format breaking. The same goes for OnlyOffice and .odt files, as it only uses .docx etc. under the hood.
I have this intrusive thought where I imagine a world in which a good WYSIWYG markdown editor covers 90% of everyone’s document needs and we can finally leave the disaster that is MS Word to burn in legacy hell.
So if anyone has ideas for what that editor might be (or needs ideas fo4 their next open source project), feel free to share.
google docs lowkey is like that
It’s also neat when Word opens your most recent document instead of the one you opened.
I haven’t stumbled upon this one yet, is there a popup asking or does it just do it and I might not have noticed?
No popup, seems to be tied to documents synced with OneDrive.
Gods I fucking hate OneDrive.
I get this sometimes, very weird.
My daughter is in online school. When she submits assignments, the uploader gives the option to upload as PDF, but I always have her do docx because I don’t trust her teachers to be computer literate to do anything but open up Microsoft Word files in terms of grading. I wouldn’t trust them to know how to do PDF markup.
I’m just glad LibreOffice can save in docx format.
If you don’t even trust the teacher to be able to open a PDF, I’d probably be more concerned about them opening the .docx file with Microsoft Office 97, or whichever archaic version they have always used on their PC, and ending up with a completely broken assignment.
Edit: Sorry I misread your comment, you talked about the process of digitally grading a PDF, I was thinking of the process of simply opening a PDF.
Not opening it, marking it up.
Not to mention a bunch of viruses
deleted by creator
Bro what sketchy apps are you using, I’ve never seen this
If that is happening, you should probably nuke your system. Word is not supposed to open up a cmd, and malicious macros have been a prime vector for malware for decades at this point
nah, you call IT and they unplug it and scan it for four hours, while you get a replacement
Sure, if it’s company managed. I wouldn’t trust myself to find all malware though, so I’d go the route of backing up important stuff (better yet, have it backed up already) and then reinstalling the OS
But then again, I’m on NixOS and haven’t touched windows in months, so that’s not really a problem I have