Problems in LibreOffice Writer when saving as .docx

I used LibreOffice for a really important task and now I am going nuts.

I check if everything is OK before closing LibreOffice, nothing seems wrong. But when I reopen the document, I noticed that some of the photos shifted to right and the page numbers' colors have changed. (Also some spaces are changed.)

What can be the reason for that? (I am saving the documents as .docx)

Solution 1:

LibreOffice Writer is compatible with MS Word, but don't expect that every format you applied in Word will be the same if you open the file in Writer and vice versa. No such thing as 100% compatibility.

I have been creating documents with MS Word at work and modifies it at home with LibreOffice Writer, and although they are compatible, there are visible changes in the document's formatting such as spacing, font, header and footer, and yes alignment of images as well.

I'd suggest that if you don't need to open it with Word, stick to the default .odt file format.

If you do need to access the file with MS Word, then I'd recommended to save it as .doc and not as .docx. Saving it in older doc version will guarantee (most of the time) to open it in the original document formatting.

For more assistance, please see How to maintain document compatibility between LibreOffice and other office suites?

Solution 2:

Do not save using .docx. The resulting document may be incompatible with Word 2010, and you are seeing that it is not even compatible with Libreoffice's import procedure.

I have a document that Word 2010 can open when I save it (with Libreoffice 3.6.2) as .doc, but if I save it as .docx, the document cannot be opened at all in Word (there is an error message). This is consistent (as is your experience) with the hypothesis that LO does not properly write .docx.

Anecdotally, I have had good experience with .doc. But if you are not collaborating with Word users, I see no reason to use anything other than .odt.