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

[Chris Jones]

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. 


As far as I am aware the easiest option, if available to you, is to
point out to the original author pptx/docx is not a format everyone can
use, and ask for the document in older MS (doc/ppt) format, or for
read-only PDF is preferable. The new versions of office which create
these docx/pptx abominations can easily convert to both of these
alternatives.

Chris