UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I'm newbie in UNIX. I would like to ask how to read a file which in Microsoft word format? Inside the doc file is just a few sentences . "It is a text. Help me with it". and I would like to replace the the word of text to message.

I was trying with this

Code:

for i in `find . -type f -name '*.doc' -print`
> do
> sed 's/text/message/g'<$i>$$
> mv $$ $i
> done

perl -e "s/text/message/g;" -pi $(find /home/test.doc -type f)

But it is failed and wrong.

Please give me some advices on it.

Thanks for helping.

Regards,
Tee

Microsoft Word is a binary file not an ascii afaik. You cannot use any text processing utility on that

OpenOffice is a stable & powerful one, which can be used for this purpose.

Is that any way to convert the microsoft word which is binary to ASCII and do the read and replace?

Please give me some advices.

Open in OpenOffice Writer, click on "File"->"Save As". In the file type drop-down select Text, enter a name, and click "Save". It'll ask you if you're sure since you'll lose all formatting, click "Yes" here.

Pretty sure there's a similar way in MS Office too.

Understand that microsoft word (almost every word processing software ) uses many formatting characters which is quite different from our ascii to store and process the data , so please dont try to do some replace operations blindly , you may lose your file.

Thanks for your advise. But the problem is, if i have more than 100 doc files in the server. And i need to read and replace those files that contain the word of text, and replace it to message. So i cant choose the way that save as new file in open office.