(Disclaimer: You still need to have Microsoft Word installed on your computer for your OpenOffice files to work with Doc-To-Help.)

I’ve had customers ask me in the past if Doc-To-Help supports OpenOffice.  My standard response was always that the file format (.ODT) is not supported by Doc-To-Help and that Word and OpenOffice have different template structures, so OpenOffice documents wouldn’t work.  Recently, I had a customer tell me that, if I figured out how to make it work, he’d buy several licenses, which was motivation enough for me.

The workflow to get from OpenOffice to Word to Doc-To-Help proved to be surprisingly easy.  Here’s what I did.

1. Googled “sample openoffice documents” and found a set of documents I could download.  Interestingly enough, they were a tutorial on how to use OpenOffice.
2. Opened each of those documents in OpenOffice and did a Save As Word 97/2000/XP (.doc) for each of them.
3. Started a new Doc-To-Help project and added the .doc files to it.
4. Clicked Rebuild on the Home tab.

That’s it.  Once I had the files in .doc format, the process of bringing them into Doc-To-Help was the same as it was for my post Take Any Word Document and Publish It in Minutes.

You can download my sample project here.

Since all three products use Heading styles to break documents into chapters and subtopics, the table of contents will be the same in all three places.  You may find that you want to do some “post production” work with the Heading styles in your Word documents in order to structure them for Doc-To-Help.  Since all three products use templates and styles to control formatting, your formatting will be the same in all three places.  You may find that you want to tweak the styles in the Word and Doc-To-Help templates to make sure that the outputs you create in Doc-To-Help look just the way you want them.  You can use the Organizer in Word to copy your OpenOffice styles to Doc-To-Help’s pre-loaded templates.  The zip file I linked to has a handy document in it called UsingTheOrganizer.docx.  That document shows you how to use the Organizer to copy your styles to Doc-To-Help’s templates.

The Doc-To-Help toolbar will show up in your documents and my project built with zero errors.  The only real “gotcha” in the process is the fact that Word needs a little guidance when it comes to recognizing the styles from the OpenOffice file.  When you open the document and pop out the style window, it will be empty.

To get Word to recognize the styles, click Options to open the Style Pane Options dialog box.  Set the “Select styles to show” dropdown to “In current document” and click OK.

And the styles will appear in the Style Window.

Try this out for yourself and let us know your results!