Using Microsoft Office and Lotus Symphony

Lotus® Symphony™ can open and save documents in the Microsoft® Office file formats. Microsoft Office Open XML formats can be read, but not saved.

Opening a Microsoft Office File

Choose File - Open. Select a Microsoft Office file in the Lotus Symphony file open dialog.

Table 1.

Microsoft Office file type	Lotus Symphony module to open in
Microsoft Office file...	...will open in Lotus Symphony module
Microsoft Word, .doc, .docx	Lotus Symphony Documents
Microsoft Excel, .xls, .xlsx	Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets
Microsoft PowerPoint, .ppt, .pps, *.pptx	Lotus Symphony Presentations

Saving as a Microsoft Office File

Choose File - Save As.
In the File type box, select a Microsoft Office file format.

Saving Documents by Default in Microsoft Office Formats

Choose File - Preferences - Symphony - Load and Save.
In the Standard file format area, first select a document type, then select the file type for saving.

From now on, if you save a document, the File type will be set according to your choice. Of course, you still can select another file type in the file save dialog.

Opening Microsoft Office Files by Default

In Windows® Explorer, right-click a file of the type that you want to assign to another application.
In the context menu, choose "Open with..."
In the list of applications, select the program that should open the current type of files. Make sure that "Always use this program" is selected.

Macros in Microsoft Office and Lotus Symphony

With a few exceptions, Microsoft Office and Lotus Symphony cannot run the same macro code. Microsoft Office uses VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code, and Lotus Symphony uses Basic code based on the Lotus Symphony API (Application Program Interface) environment. Although the programming language is the same, the objects and methods are different.

The most recent versions of Lotus Symphony can run some Excel Visual Basic scripts if you enable this feature at File - Preferences - Symphony - Load and Save - VBA Properties.

If you use macros in one of the applications and want to use the same functionality in the other application, you must edit the macros. Lotus Symphony can load the macros that are contained within Microsoft Office files and you can then view and edit the macro code in the Lotus Symphony Basic IDE editor.

You can choose to preserve or delete VBA macros

Open a Microsoft Office document that contains VBA macro code. Change only the normal contents (text, cells, graphics), and do not edit the macros. Save the document as a Microsoft Office file type. Open the file in Microsoft Office, and the VBA macros will run as before.

You may delete the VBA macros from the Microsoft Office file on loading or on saving.