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Today I decided to switch my OS from windows 10 to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. I started to recover all my documents, pictures, music and software projects. Then, I recognized that some of the files I'd like to recovery will not work in UNIX based OS (i.e. MS word files). To make sure that all my files are accessable in Ubuntu, I'd like to know, how to revocer files (including the filesystem NTFS, FAT32) and how to check if the files have the correct format?

I searched a while if there are some tools which make the transfer from Windows to Ubuntu easier, but could not find a helpful answer.

I hope you can give me advice and comments on this.

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  • Can you clarify what you mean by MS Word files not working in Ubuntu? For example, LibreOffice is a popular productivity suite that will open Microsoft Word files.
    – Jeff
    Jun 15, 2019 at 12:56
  • in addition to @JeffH. comment ... you can install LibreOffice in windows and test its ability to open your Word documents
    – jsotola
    Jun 15, 2019 at 17:25

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Gnu/Linux (e.g. Ubuntu) is not MS-Windows. While it is better, it is not just an improved MS-Windows. There will be many things that annoy you during the transition. There will be many amazing things that Gnu/Linux does, that you will take years to discover (or never).

I would start by installing virtual-box on your MS-Windows, and running Gnu/Linux in it. Then after some time. Install Gnu/Linux direct on the hardware, install virtual-box, and put MS-Windows in the box. Sometime latter you will stop using MS-Windows.

You should also as soon as possible stop using software with vendor lock-in. That is anything that tries to make it difficult to stop using it.

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If your Ubuntu is not recognising NTFS filesystems then you need to install ntfs-3g.

After that then, as commented above, LibreOffice will take care of the docx and xlsx files. Just about all other file types are cross platform.

Where you have been using software with their own formats or proprietary software that is not available in Linux then you will need to find open source equivalents. There is a fair bit of advice about.

Where there is no Linux alternative, it used to be the norm to try and run Windows programmes in Linux under Wine in order to maintain use of Windows programmes. Personally I have 2 virtual windows machines (Win7 & Win10) installed via Virtualbox and a shared partition (which is accessible from both of the VMs and my Linux host) for the files.

All the 'dedicated' Windows programmes I need are installed on the VMs and running in a 'native' Windows environment. This works a treat.

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