# Open Office spreadsheet morphed into Excel - WTF?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 23, 2018, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464 "2018-07-23T18:26:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2018, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464/1 "2018-07-23T18:26:57Z")
I have a spreadsheet in Open Office that I’ve use for over a year, adding data to it occasionally. I started using it again today and it seems to have changed to an Excel document. I have no clue how this happened. Can anyone explain and/or tell me how to change it back?
I was going to use the Excel, but it won’t input dates the way I want. I type in “03 JAN” and when I go to the next cell (or hit enter) it changes it to “3-Jan”. Can anyone tell me how to set it so it stays what I type instead of converting it?
---
### Author:  [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2018, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464/2 "2018-07-23T18:32:32Z")
It’s Lenovo all-in-one running Windows 7.
---
### Author:  [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2018, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464/3 "2018-07-23T18:39:50Z")
Has the file suffix actually changed from .ods to .xlsx? Maybe all that’s happened is that Windows changed the file association for .ods to Excel.
---
### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2018, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464/4 "2018-07-23T18:50:52Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#):
>
> Has the file suffix actually changed from .ods to .xlsx? Maybe all that’s happened is that Windows changed the file association for .ods to Excel.
Yeah—could you be a little more specific about what you mean by “it seems to have changed to an Excel document”?
---
### Author:  [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excavating_for_a_mind)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2018, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464/5 "2018-07-23T18:56:29Z")
You can save an OpenOfficeCalc spreadsheet as an Excel file. If you have Windows set-up to open .xls files with OpenOffice, then it will open it and when you hit “save” it will re-save it as an .xls file unless you specifically tell it to save it as an .ods file.
All you have to do is a “Save As…” and set the file type to ‘.ods’.
---
### Author:  [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2018, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464/6 "2018-07-23T19:06:27Z")
Inspired by **Gorsnak’s** suggestion, I right-clicked on the file name in the Documents library and selected “properties”. There it said “Opens with Excel”. I changed it to Opens with OpenOffice and opened it, and it now shows it to be the normal OpenOffice format. However it says it’s locked for editing, and offers a “Open Read-Only” option (which I can’t use to input new data) and a “Open Copy” option, which is letting me do my usual inputting.
I’m not very savvy about this stuff. I’m baffled as to why it inexplicably changed the “opens with” to Excel, and why it locked up the original. So far it seems I’m okay using the copy, but I’d love to know how this happened.
---
### Author:  [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2018, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464/7 "2018-07-23T19:07:56Z")
> [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](#):
>
> You can save an OpenOfficeCalc spreadsheet as an Excel file. If you have Windows set-up to open .xls files with OpenOffice, then it will open it and when you hit “save” it will re-save it as an .xls file unless you specifically tell it to save it as an .ods file.
>
> All you have to do is a “Save As…” and set the file type to ‘.ods’.
When I check the file it shows to be ods, but still has the read-only and copy options. I don’t know how it’s set up, but I’ve been using this for over a year and it hasn’t done this before.
---
### Author:  [@Mr.Bill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Bill)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2018, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464/8 "2018-07-23T21:19:02Z")
> [@Gary\_T](#):
>
> Inspired by **Gorsnak’s** suggestion, I right-clicked on the file name in the Documents library and selected “properties”. There it said “Opens with Excel”. I changed it to Opens with OpenOffice and opened it, and it now shows it to be the normal OpenOffice format. However it says it’s locked for editing, and offers a “Open Read-Only” option (which I can’t use to input new data) and a “Open Copy” option, which is letting me do my usual inputting.
>
> I’m not very savvy about this stuff. I’m baffled as to why it inexplicably changed the “opens with” to Excel, and why it locked up the original. So far it seems I’m okay using the copy, but I’d love to know how this happened.
If it opens with a read-only option, do that then “save as” the file with a different name. You should then be able to edit the new file.
---
### Author:  [@PoppaSan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoppaSan)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2018, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464/9 "2018-07-23T21:24:51Z")
Save your copy as a new file name. Use Windows Explorer to find and delete all the old file name files. There is most likely a hidden one that is telling Windows the file is open. Since something somehow failed, it is the existence of this file that is telling Windows it is locked. That file normally deletes when you properly close out. When done, do a save as with the old file name if it is important.
ETA don’t have either the new or old file open when you are doing the search and delete.
---
### Author:  [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2018, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464/10 "2018-07-24T00:17:42Z")
> [@Gary\_T](#):
>
> I was going to use the Excel, but it won’t input dates the way I want. I type in “03 JAN” and when I go to the next cell (or hit enter) it changes it to “3-Jan”. Can anyone tell me how to set it so it stays what I type instead of converting it?
That is the display format. You can change the display format (for Cells) to anything you want. However, depending on your spreadsheet program, you may not be able to change the default automatic date format that is used when you haven’t set the row/column/cell to be a date.
---
### Author:  [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2018, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-office-spreadsheet-morphed-into-excel-wtf/818464/11 "2018-07-24T17:18:38Z")
I had a Lenovo update not long ago hijack the file associations and had to set files with the Microsoft Office extensions back to open with open office. (I don’t have MSOffice and Lenovo wanted to use some weird online file viewer …)