HOWTO run MSOffice 2003 in Puppy Linux

[steve_s]

Hi steve_s,

Seems as though you're dangerously close to success.

If you open the Wine configuration file Applications tab and click the "Add application" button then navigate to "excel.exe" (assuming that is the correct launch name) then from the drop down list choose which Windows version you want to use (just for Excel) and click OK.

The time here is 27 minutes past midnight.

My regards

Ha! Ok...I'll check it out. You get some sleep.

[steve_s]

Ok, got it to work more consistently this time without crashing, Excel that is.

Following Sir Jasper's suggestion I checked out Excel.exe in the applications window of winecfg. I had done this before but, with Excel.exe selected, I poked around some more.

Under the graphics tab gives you the option of setting a "Virtual Desktop." This seems to be sort of a platform for Excel/Office to run in. I set the Virtual Desktop for Excel as 800x600, then clicked "Apply."

Excel runs great within the Virtual Desktop. I don't like the Virtual Desktop overall so I've left it off of the other ones.

For the record, I'll probably use gnumeric or OOffice for spreadsheets, but I just needed to get Excel to work. Now it does.

[steve_s]

Ok, with MSOffice in it, the .wine folder is 742MB!

Even trimming this Puppy down, it would still be too big for a cd.

A DVD iso burn?

...or make an sfs of Microsoft Office? It would only work on this version of Puppy, so it would take a remaster then a separate sfs.

What do you think is the most efficient way to make this portable? Everyone, what do you recommend...

[Jasper]

Hi Steve,

Do I correctly understand that you can Emulate a virtual desktop just for Excel (as opposed to for all Wine programs)? I have a minor problem with my tray icons (for inactive Wine programs) whether in Full Screen or Virtual mode and I wonder if you have a similar display problem with any of your programs? Your eyesight is doubtless good, but I would set my virtual box larger than 800 x 600.

I have an sfs of OO (and there is a portable Linux version of it which has all the OO programs - not just the main three). There is also a Portable Windows version of OO 3.2 which is from PortableApps.com and it runs under Wine (and may not have Gold status, but seemed fine to me from a cursory check).

With Lucid Puppy Gnumeric loads (for me) instantaneously whereas OO is quite slow, but OO can save with MSOffice extensions so there is total portability of data (except for some macros) between Linux and Windows.

I have not investigated if Gnumeric can import/export from/to MSOffice formats.

As regards size and portability perhaps a USB stick might be the answer (especially for boxes with USB 2 or 3) - perhaps in conjunction with a CD for older machines (like mine) which cannot boot from a USB stick.

Congratulations on your win and thanks again.

[steve_s]

Hi Steve,

Do I correctly understand that you can Emulate a virtual desktop just for Excel (as opposed to for all Wine programs)? I have a minor problem with my tray icons (for inactive Wine programs) whether in Full Screen or Virtual mode and I wonder if you have a similar display problem with any of your programs? Your eyesight is doubtless good, but I would set my virtual box larger than 800 x 600.

I have an sfs of OO (and there is a portable Linux version of it which has all the OO programs - not just the main three). There is also a Portable Windows version of OO 3.2 which is from PortableApps.com and it runs under Wine (and may not have Gold status, but seemed fine to me from a cursory check).

With Lucid Puppy Gnumeric loads (for me) instantaneously whereas OO is quite slow, but OO can save with MSOffice extensions so there is total portability of data (except for some macros) between Linux and Windows.

I have not investigated if Gnumeric can import/export from/to MSOffice formats.

As regards size and portability perhaps a USB stick might be the answer (especially for boxes with USB 2 or 3) - perhaps in conjunction with a CD for older machines (like mine) which cannot boot from a USB stick.

Congratulations on your win and thanks again.

Thanks on the congrat's, Sir Jasper.

Yes, I set a virtual desktop only for Excel. Just select it like you are going to mess with the libraries, then change virtual desktop as needed. It is the only one that I have running in Virtual right now.

Yes, gnumeric can import/export .xls files no problem. It and scalc (openoffice calc) make dealing with Excel unnecessary, really, I was just being stuborn in getting it to run.

Yeah, with Puppy you can use the sfs's for just about anything...I'm thinking make an sfs of this version of MSOffice and use it with a remastered livecd. I'm using wine right now as an sfs...for that matter, even though I don't have to, I'm using cabextract as a sfs too.

I'm just open to ideas from the Puppy crew to see if there is something I didn't think of as far as being portable goes...they always surprise me.

[steve_s]

All right. Regarding portability, went with a livecd of Puppy 4.0 and a usb flash drive that has a save file on it and a wine sfs file. Thanks to Puppy if I want to use Office where ever on any computer I'm good.

[steve_s]

Ha! Just got it to work on KDPUP too...[insert evil Puppian laugh, aka mad genius]

[steve_s]

Some follow up: I got this running on both KDPup and KDPup lite but on BOTH all works fine except for Publisher which crashes as soon as you try and do anything with it, like open a document, etc.

All others, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, seem quite stable in those versions.

The ONLY one that I've got going so far that is very, very stable is Puppy 4.0 with the first version of wine that I posted with the initial instructions and the Excel variation of virtual screen.

AND I've gotten that Puppy 4.0 with MSOffice onto an ISO of 477MB. By Puppy standards its huge but it really is just the stuff from this thread and Opera added to Puppy 4.0.

Obviously I can't post the ISO but I'll post more results on testing that iso out along with pic's later this weekend.

All you Americans enjoy the Labor day weekend!

[ttuuxxx]

I had ms office 2003 working on wifes PC last year, actually ran nice. But the only issue I had is the font rendering wasn't all that great, Even after I used MS fonts. She didn't like the font look either and decided not to use puppy, grrrrrrrr took me forever to set her up. Oh well
ttuuxxx

[steve_s]

I had ms office 2003 working on wifes PC last year, actually ran nice. But the only issue I had is the font rendering wasn't all that great, Even after I used MS fonts. She didn't like the font look either and decided not to use puppy, grrrrrrrr took me forever to set her up. Oh well
ttuuxxx

Ha! Aren't wives awesome? Yeah, the font smoothing thing that Vovchik posted was very helpful. That doesn't really bother me all that much, but I did notice after applying his fix.

[ttuuxxx]

Thanks steve_s I'll try that one next time I rebuild her pc
ttuuxxx

[steve_s]

First round of testing the remaster:

First of all, MSOffice survived the remaster and everything is stable, opens, can do documents, first testing is good. One interesting quirk which I'll mention in a minute.

Secondly: notes for mounting an iso then booting as a frugal **Edit**make certain to specify in /boot/grub/menu.lst on the kernel line psubdir=(whatever your subdirectory is) or it will try to run the last run pup_400.sfs file and make you choose a save file every time. For example psubdir=puppy4

Now, as far as the quirk that I mentioned before: whenever I run Publisher and try to start a new flyer or website or whatever, it tries to INSTALL MSOffice, and shows the intial installer. ?? How weird is that. I just hit cancel, cancel, and ended it, then Publisher continued on along fine. (update)

Also, after a remaster, Word says, "It can't find the "Normal" file" so just save a blank file as normal, it tells you where to save it, then it works fine.

No problems anywhere else. Next test I'm going to open a bunch of previously made documents and post the results on this frugal, but I don't predict any problems. Looks like the MSOffice2003/Puppy Linux 4.0 remaster has been successful at 477MB.

Oh, I'm posting from the remaster right now....

[steve_s]

In the past, it was basically impossible to look at Publisher files (*.pub) in Linux.

But even running Publisher in windows, if I wanted to convert it to pdf, I had to have another program that acted as a pdf printer to allow that to work (something like this).

But with this settup now, I can open all my Publisher files, then when I want them in pdf format, I hit print and the first on my Puppy Linux list is CUPS/PDF, select it, print it and it creates a pdf where I want it created. Easy...awesome.

[steve_s]

And, just FYI, same holds true to PowerPoint which can also be a difficult thing to handle in Linux without a settup like this...pdf'ing is just as easy.

[steve_s]

Further testing: previous mentioned Publisher "install" quirk: it only occurs on first attempt to run an internal template (i.e. website design template) on initial boot. In other words, it does not occur again if you keep Publisher open and try then try to run the website design template again for a new design; Publisher works just fine at that point and doesn't try to install MSOffice again.

[steve_s]

Ok, I'm not a huge scripter, but I am a good thief.

Using these scripts, if you have everything already set up and installed with wine, will open MSOffice files as the default.

For example, I now have it set so that if I see a Publisher file, say anniversary-flyer.pub, I can just click it/double-click it and Publisher opens it. I have it set for Powerpoint, Word and Excel too.

Here is the script I started with. ATTENTION SCRIPTERS: the only thing I changed besides the exe program to use is the comment about kdialog (I changed it to gtkdialog) 'cause I figured Puppy is default gtk rather than a kde desktop, correct? But that's just for the error message, which I haven't encountered yet.

Anyway, here is the script:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
# Launch Microsoft Word either by itself or with the provided file name to open.

# Fully qualifies pathname of the Windows Application to launch
PROGRAM="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\OFFICE11\\WINWORD.EXE"

# If launched with no parameters, just run the application and exit.
if [ $# = 0 ]; then
    wine "$PROGRAM"
    exit 0
fi

# Get the file to open and the directory where it resides.
FILE_NAME=`basename "$1"`
DIR_NAME=`dirname "$1"`

# Convert directory from relative to fully qualified path.
if [ `echo $DIR_NAME | cut -c 1` != "/" ]; then
    DIR_NAME=`pwd`/$DIR_NAME
fi

# Change to the directory, run winepath to see if the directory maps to a fake
# windows drive.  WINEPATH_ERRS is 1 if not and 0 if yes.
cd "$DIR_NAME"
winepath "$DIR_NAME" > /tmp/winepath.chk 2>&1
WINEPATH_ERRS=`cat /tmp/winepath.chk | grep "Warning" | wc -l`

# If we cannot edit the file, show error box and terminate.
if [ $WINEPATH_ERRS -gt 0 ]; then
    kdialog --title "WINE/Microsoft Office Error!" --error \
  "ERROR:
  Attempting to open a file using a Windows Application where the file is not in a location accessible b$
  - Move the file ($1) to a valid location.
  - Ensure that ($DIR_NAME) is accessible to WINE.
  Fake Windows drives are configured as softlinks (ln -s) in the directory (~/.wine/dosdevices).  The cu$
    $(ls -l ~/.wine/dosdevices | tr -s " " | cut -d " " -f 9-) "
    exit 1
fi

# Finally run the application.
wine "$PROGRAM" "$FILE_NAME"

I changed the part I mentioned and set one up for Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Publisher and put them in a pet (it puts a program for each in /usr/bin).

Then, whenever you encounter a file you want to open with an MSOffice program (for example, spreadsheet.xls), assuming you are using the default Puppy desktop (which is rox filer and jwm window manager) you would right click it then select "Set Run Action" and pick the appropriate program to put before the "$1" (so, for spreadsheet.xls, my run action would be excellaunch "$1"). Set the corresponding run actions for each of your MSOffice programs (Word, *.doc, wordlaunch "$1", Publisher, *.pub, publaunch "$1", Powerpoint, *.ppt, powerpnt "$1", Excel, *.xls, excellaunch "$1").

Hope that makes sense to everyone...please test, but I can tell you it works pretty well for me, opening each document I want just as if it were running native from Puppy.

[steve_s]

Now, let's say you want to have your menu all set up like all the other Puppy stuff is.

If you've done the other stuff including the scripts in this post then it will make the menu entry stuff easy.

Here are menu entries for Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Publisher. And here are the little tiny menu icons too (I just got 'em from here and converted 'em to *.xpm format).

Enjoy! Even if you don't use my previous scripts to run the programs these *.desktop files may still make your life easier, just go to /usr/share/applications/ and find each file and put your own executable there.

Of course, if you did use my scripts, just install these pets, refresh your menus/restart your wm and you'll have your new menu entries/icons.

[sfeeley]

I don't know if anybody follow this thread, but I thought I would chime in.


A) MSOffice97--Success: I was able to follow essentially the instructions early in the thread for installing msoffice97. And despite its age I find that msword97 is a good word processor. Its fairly lightweight (although the added weight of wine is a drag). And it doesn't have the problems with footnotes suffering weird format problems that I encounter with libreoffice, oo, and abiword. Downside is that it can't handle the latest docx files.

but

b) MSOffice2000--Failure. Surprisingly, the same instructions that supposedly work for msoffice2003 and for msoffice97, didn't seem to work for me with a copy of MSOffice2000. Very odd.
--If anybody has suggestions on this front, I would be love to hear them. Thanks.

PS: And since I don't know if anybody is following this thread, it might be worth giving me a quick heads up on PM if you write in.--Thanks

[steve_s]

I don't know if anybody follow this thread, but I thought I would chime in.


A) MSOffice97--Success: I was able to follow essentially the instructions early in the thread for installing msoffice97. And despite its age I find that msword97 is a good word processor. Its fairly lightweight (although the added weight of wine is a drag). And it doesn't have the problems with footnotes suffering weird format problems that I encounter with libreoffice, oo, and abiword. Downside is that it can't handle the latest docx files.

but

b) MSOffice2000--Failure. Surprisingly, the same instructions that supposedly work for msoffice2003 and for msoffice97, didn't seem to work for me with a copy of MSOffice2000. Very odd.
--If anybody has suggestions on this front, I would be love to hear them. Thanks.

PS: And since I don't know if anybody is following this thread, it might be worth giving me a quick heads up on PM if you write in.--Thanks

You get error messages or anything?

[p310don]

As an interesting side note to all this, I have found a great alternative for docx files at least. Not sure about the rest of msoffice suite.

In hotmail, there is now the option to open and edit msoffice files online, in your browser. They render perfectly, unlike openoffice, and can be printed to pdf in linux no probs.

It sure saves some hassles with installing msoffice via wine, and doesn't require spending money with M$