HOWTO run MSOffice 2003 in Puppy Linux

How to do things, solutions, recipes, tutorials
Message
Author
User avatar
ttuuxxx
Posts: 11171
Joined: Sat 05 May 2007, 10:00
Location: Ontario Canada,Sydney Australia
Contact:

#31 Post by ttuuxxx »

Thanks steve_s I'll try that one next time I rebuild her pc :)
ttuuxxx
http://audio.online-convert.com/ <-- excellent site
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/A-codecs/ <-- Codec Test Files
http://html5games.com/ <-- excellent HTML5 games :)

User avatar
steve_s
Posts: 1595
Joined: Mon 26 May 2008, 13:29
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Contact:

#32 Post by 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. 8)

Oh, I'm posting from the remaster right now....
Attachments
remaster-screenie1.jpg
(81.45 KiB) Downloaded 1646 times
Last edited by steve_s on Sun 05 Sep 2010, 18:53, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
steve_s
Posts: 1595
Joined: Mon 26 May 2008, 13:29
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Contact:

Creating a PDF with this Settup

#33 Post by 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. 8)
Attachments
remaster-screenie2.jpg
(95.69 KiB) Downloaded 1587 times

User avatar
steve_s
Posts: 1595
Joined: Mon 26 May 2008, 13:29
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Contact:

#34 Post by 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.
Attachments
remaster-screenie3.jpg
(91.07 KiB) Downloaded 1572 times

User avatar
steve_s
Posts: 1595
Joined: Mon 26 May 2008, 13:29
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Contact:

#35 Post by 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. 8)

User avatar
steve_s
Posts: 1595
Joined: Mon 26 May 2008, 13:29
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Contact:

Set MSOffice programs as default Run Action

#36 Post by 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. 8)
Attachments
msofficelaunchers.pet
Launcher scripts to open MSOffice documents.
(1.28 KiB) Downloaded 487 times

User avatar
steve_s
Posts: 1595
Joined: Mon 26 May 2008, 13:29
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Contact:

MSOffice Menu Entries and Icons

#37 Post by 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. 8)
Attachments
remaster-screenie4.jpg
(62.23 KiB) Downloaded 1547 times
msoffice-icons-menu.pet
(6.16 KiB) Downloaded 462 times
msoffice-menu-items.pet
(714 Bytes) Downloaded 477 times

sfeeley
Posts: 812
Joined: Sun 14 Feb 2010, 16:34

#38 Post by 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

User avatar
steve_s
Posts: 1595
Joined: Mon 26 May 2008, 13:29
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Contact:

#39 Post by steve_s »

sfeeley wrote: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
Posts: 1492
Joined: Tue 19 May 2009, 23:11
Location: Brisbane, Australia

#40 Post by 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$

User avatar
jrb
Posts: 1536
Joined: Tue 11 Dec 2007, 19:56
Location: Smithers, BC, Canada

#41 Post by jrb »

sfeeley wrote: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.
I was able to install FileFormatConverters.exe with msoffice97 and open .docx files no problem. Can't save in that format but nobody I work with cares.

I've also been able to install msoffice2007 following instructions from winehq and got word, excel and powerpoint running well. Haven't tried publisher as I don't use it. Access seems hopeless.

Good thread Steve, I wish I had seen it earlier. Cheers, J

User avatar
steve_s
Posts: 1595
Joined: Mon 26 May 2008, 13:29
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Contact:

#42 Post by steve_s »

jrb wrote:
sfeeley wrote: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.
I was able to install FileFormatConverters.exe with msoffice97 and open .docx files no problem. Can't save in that format but nobody I work with cares.

I've also been able to install msoffice2007 following instructions from winehq and got word, excel and powerpoint running well. Haven't tried publisher as I don't use it. Access seems hopeless.

Good thread Steve, I wish I had seen it earlier. Cheers, J
Thanks, jrb. You got a link for the ms2007 wine page?

User avatar
jrb
Posts: 1536
Joined: Tue 11 Dec 2007, 19:56
Location: Smithers, BC, Canada

#43 Post by jrb »

steve_s wrote:You got a link for the ms2007 wine page?
Category: Main > Productivity > Office Suites > Microsoft Office (installer only) > 2007
Just went back and reread this and noticed in the fine print at the bottom:
Known bad Wine versions (do not try to install):
1.3.16
1.3.7
1.3.2
1.2.0 and 1.2.1 (Ubuntu and other distro packages compiled with fortify)
1.1.17 through 1.1.23
all versions prior to 1.1.3 (includes 1.0.1)
I think I originally installed in wine-1.3.6 which is rated platinum for the installer (dumb luck 8) ). I have updated wine a few times, with the same .wine folder, and the apps continue to run well. (I keep a backup .wine.tar.gz for when an install screws up). Am currently on 1.3.14 and will update shortly to 1.3.16.

Note: wine-1.3.6 is still availabe from green_dome at http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 738#462738. Thanks green_dome!

User avatar
steve_s
Posts: 1595
Joined: Mon 26 May 2008, 13:29
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Contact:

#44 Post by steve_s »

jrb: thanks! 8)

sfeeley
Posts: 812
Joined: Sun 14 Feb 2010, 16:34

#45 Post by sfeeley »

@steve_S
You get error messages or anything?
I can't recall exactly what happened. Unfortunately it probably won't be until next weekend or so that I might decide to try again. I'll take better note of errors when i do.

sfeeley
Posts: 812
Joined: Sun 14 Feb 2010, 16:34

#46 Post by sfeeley »

This is an old thread, but I'll post since it still seems to be the definitive one for Microsoft Office

several posts back (and about a year ago) I used the instructions to install MSOFFICE 97. Then I mentioned that it seemed to run well but that wine was a system drag.

Later this year, I got a newer laptop, installed wine, and this time installed MSOFFICE 2003. It seemed to run great--better even than office97. For a long time I attributed this better performace to the fact that this is a newer computer.

Well, today, I copied over the wine installation with Office2003 to the older computer, and what do you know? It works better than 97!

On word97 the processor would cycle between 3%-100% depending on what I was doing. Typing more than a few words at a time would shoot things up to 100%. Performance seemed fine, but the fan would blow.

Now on the same older computer, word2003 runs at a steady 6%-11% with none of the outrageous spikes.

Office2003 is much much larger. But I think most of that is the 350M of extra fonts that comes with it.

Hope this helps somebody.
Maybe there is a flaw in the described method when applied to office97? Maybe office2003 really was an improvement.

EDIT: word2003 runs higher CPU on much larger documents (50 plus pages 150plus footnotes), more in the 60-65% CPU range, but still better than before.

(and if anyone is wondering-- its those footnotes, which libreoffice and abiword tend to mess up, that have me using word)

EDIT #2:
Weird: with word2003, I can't copy something that I composed into my webbased email. (I can copy to abiword, and from there to my email). I can do this with word97

Post Reply