This has me intrigued. Open Office should be compatible with MS Word (and visa versa).
Note: I do not have Open Office - maybe someone else will chime in with their recommendations...
Would you provide more details about which templates you have tried?
When I tried exporting my catalog to ODT (using a text based template), MS Word refused to open the document citing an "Illegal Name Character" as the culprit for the error.
But, if I choose to use an ODT template that exports the books' covers it is successful!
Digging around for the list of illegal characters in Word brought me to this information -
Some of the forbidden Characters are:
Numbers before names, Superscript/Subscripts, " ' \ | / < > { } [ ] << >>
Numbers after Names are okay. None of these characters can be used in name of Hard Drive, Directory Names, and any File Names.
And on servers no names can have the name File or Fileserver in any path names.
You can use _ (underscores).
Added after 1 hour 16 minutes:Found the solution that worked for me....
(ALWAYS a good idea to backup your database prior to attempting changes on a global scale)
Close AllMyBooks
Find your db on your computer, right-click, and "Open With.." and choose "Access.exe"
On the left side (under "All Tables"), choose "books : Table" and open it.
Look for the column "title" (14th column) and select the entire column by selecting the title.
Pressing <Ctrl> and <H> will pull up a find and replace window:
**Look in: Title (Should be the name of the column you highlighted)
**Match: Any Part of Field
**Search: All
Now what I did was search for : and replaced it with -
Then I searched for & and replaced it with the word - and.
Close "Access" (database is automatically saved).
Reopen AllMyBooks and try to export your database to ODT again.
It works flawlessly - now.
Note: The two characters that I searched for and replaced worked for me, however; you may need to search for other special characters to resolve your issue. I recommend doing a few at a time so as not to confuse the situation.