Haiku doesn't recognise docx and xlsx files

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1

I’m trying to get Haiku to recognise office files like docx and xlsx so that I can simply open them by double clicking. At the moment Haiku seems to think these are archives, and opens up Expander?

2

Right-click on the file, go to Add-ons => Filetypes. Select Preferred app dropdown => select LibreOffice Writer or Calc. Close window.

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3

I have tried doing this for jpeg files, and it works for the selected image, but not for any other. It seems to me that I need to change the default application for image files (which is currently Web+), but I haven’t found a way to do so.

4

To set the preferred app for all files, you can either use the FileTypes preferences to set the preferred app for that MIME type. Or you use Open with… from the context menu of a file of that type. Don’t choose an app from its submenu, but click on the Open with… itself.

For details, see the user guide of Tracker .

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5

That’s great, thank you.

6

Because, until you have some apps, like LibreOffice, installed and you can configure your Haiku to use these apps as preferred ones for .docx and .xlsx, Haiku rely on auto-detection of files types based on sniffing their content to discover it. As these files are actually following OpenXML “package” format, which is using a zip file to hide multiple data files under it, Haiku auto detect, via default file type sniffing rules, that theses files as being zip files, which they are technically.

And by default Expander is the default preferred app for zip file (and other archive files).

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7

Thank you for the explanation. I was wondering.

8

Maybe the LibreOffice haikuport could be enhanced to add automatically definition of .docx and .xlsx files types and set itself as preferred app to open it, though. Maybe it’s already doing it, but it doesn’t works as expected then.

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9

I guess we could include those file types by default, anyway.

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10

Yes, we should. Even if we have only expander for them.

I do wonder if we should add a more complex sniffer for complex formats (or these types of container formats) though.

Jar and .love bundles come to mind that are also “just zip” bundles

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11

E-book formats like .epub and .mobi are zipped-up HTML files as well. But there the DRM might be a problem.