Help for people still using Apache OpenOffice

Do you know someone who is still using Apache OpenOffice? Have they recently tried to open a .odt, .ods or .odp file and received this error message? “This document was created by a newer version of OpenOffice. It may contain features not supported by your current version.

AOO error message
The notice (pictured) that pops up in Apache OpenOffice doesn’t say so, but even the latest version of AOO (4.1.8, which was released earlier this month) does NOT support features like ODF 1.3, so updating to it won’t help. AOO users would need to “update” to LibreOffice. (LibreOffice users can avoid the problem for OO users by continuing to save files in ODF 1.2.)

Note: other features are lacking in AOO, for example the ability to save files in DOCX format, even though AOO can open DOCX files. LibreOffice can do both. Wouldn’t it be nice (helpful) if the “Update Now” button in AOO took a user to the LO download page?

See also this blog post at LibreOffice.