AbiWord can convert documents in one format (it doesn't have to be AbiWord, just a format AbiWord supports) to OpenOffice.org Writer, or Word, or any of a heck of a lot other formats. Even better, you can do these conversions via the command line. For instance, let's say you have a Word document named foo.doc, and you want to convert it to AbiWord format without having to open the program.

$ abiword --to=abw foo.doc

You'll have a document named foo.doc and one named foo.abw. What if you wanted the new document to have a different name too? Just use this:

$ abiword --to=bar.abw foo.doc

The process is the same if you want to convert foo.doc to OpenOffice.org Writer.

$ abiword --to=sxw foo.doc

And so on. You can use several different formats, including zabw, rtf, txt, utf8, html, latex, & many, many more. Just open up AbiWord, go to Save As, & take a look at the various formats supported.

Of course, the real power comes in when you write a simple script to batch process a bunch of docs.

for i in * ; do abiword --to=abw $i ; done

This would convert all documents in a directory to AbiWord format. If you find yourself doing this over and over again, make an alias.

Pretty cool, eh?

(Check out all of my posts on AbiWord.)