Quickbooks form letters without MS Word?

March 4, 2009 1:27 AM

I have Quickbooks Pro 2008 for Windows. How can I tell Quickbooks to use OpenOffice, or some other free non-Word app, when I want to print or edit Quickbooks form letters?

Quickbooks lets you generate form letters via Company -> Prepare Letters with Envelopes.

It demands that I have Word installed to see / edit / print these letters.

I don't have Word.

How can I tell Quickbooks to use OpenOffice or some other free Word alternative?

I checked the preferences window and didn't see anything in this direction.

posted by zippy to computers & internet (3 comments total)

Is OpenOffice set as the default program for opening .DOC files? If nothing else, I think you can download the free Word Document Viewer which might trick Quickbooks into thinking all is right with the world.

If you don't have a default program for .doc extensions, set one. If you're in XP or 2000, open an explorer window, click Tools (or Alt+T if the menu bar isn't visible) and then Folder Options, and then File Types. Search for .doc and set the program to OpenOffice. (OpenOffice likely has the ability to force it to take over these file associations, but I don't use it, so I don't know.)

In Vista, just right click on a .doc, select the General tab, click the Change button next to "Opens With" and browse to OpenOffice. (Or Start-->Default Programs. Or Start-->Control Panel-->Classic View-->Default Programs.)
posted by disillusioned at 2:17 AM on March 4

I don't think you can. If Quickbooks is passing data to Word it's doing it via some sort of macro or API. Neither is likely to work the same way with OO as it does with Word.
posted by COD at 5:35 AM on March 4

I tried installing the Word Document Viewer (great idea, disillusioned) but it didn't help.

I finally installed an old version of Word. Quickbooks got one step closer, but then Word complained about a missing file. Finally restarted Quickbooks, somehow performed the right incantation, and everything now works.

All this to create a glorified text file, yeesh.

It appears that Quickbooks is tightly linked to Word for this feature.

Thank you for the help.
posted by zippy at 12:20 AM on March 7