What is the best option to open .docx, pptx files in Ubuntu LTS 8.04 ?

[Bart Silverstrim]

Hal Burgiss wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 08, 2008 at 06:11:54AM -0700, Steve Grace wrote:
>> On Wed, 2008-10-08 at 16:34 +0530, Ashish Vijaywargiya wrote:
>>> Please help me in this matter because I need any converter or
>>> supporting open-source software that help me on this matter.
>>> May be this question has been asked so many times on the Ubuntu
>>> mailing list but I don't know how to search the old email that
>>> has been answered.
>> OpenOffice.org Writer opens .docx files.
> 
> What version? I get errors with the 2.4.1 that I believe is std issue
> on 8.04. I have never successfully opened docx, xlsx or pptx files in
> OO. In fact, its a right royal pain to get them converted. There is a
> OO plugin from SuSE, but no joy with that for me. 

I remember opening a docx file in writer. I'm running 2.4.1.

Just to test it for you, I opened Word 2007 and saved a docx file to a 
network share that said "Howdy, this is a test" and on my Ubuntu (Hardy) 
system opened it up and it opened without error.

Do the documents you're trying to open have special formatting or 
embedded objects/macros in it that OO can't translate?