I am going to divorce M*cr*$*ft!

[purpletigron]

If you don't mind Microsoft snooping around on your computer, there is a utility called Remove Hidden Data which will clean up bloated Word documents.

What I have done is the following:

Import 23 Mb .doc into OpenOffice Writer
Export .doc as Web 'site' (.html etc.)
Import .html back into Word
Save as 145 kb .doc

Moral: Never Track Changes, especially if you want to move documents by email. Actually: purge all MS software from your hard drive NOW.

Comments

[carandol.livejournal.com]

Linux -- you know it makes sense! :-)

[vashti.livejournal.com]

Embarrassing question.

How do you import HTML into Word? I can only get the raw HTML. *blush

And no, I can't do it in OpenOffice under Linux either.

[d-h.livejournal.com]

In the File > Open command, explicitly tell it to open html by setting the what kind of file should I look for to web page/html.

[darkvervain.livejournal.com]

Linux or FreeBSD... definitely :)

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

This reminded me of the Verity Stob quote,

"Using OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office is like eating organic food instead of conventional. It is not the experience, or the expense, or the convenience that matters. It is the knowledge that you are a

better person

for so doing."

The old method for doing this used to be converting to

.rtf

and back, but only worked for simple stuff. Most of the MS Word documents I work on actually need all that change tracking and metadata. Well, except the ones that really should be text files.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's the knowledge that it's not rotting the brains of the people who make the stuff too :-)

I tried converting to .rtf first off :-)

I wish people today knew what a text file is ...