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Opening Office files in MS Office (running under Wine) via a double click leads to a blank document

Hi all

Here follows a bug report about a strange behavior in opening Office documents in Linux under Microsoft Office 2010 and Wine.

When a Word, Excel, or whatever Office file (even OpenDocument) is opened via a doubleclick, a blank document is shown.

Interestingly this does not occur when the corresponding file is opened via a right click and "Open With". In that case, the file is displayed correctly.

I have observed that behavior for a long time with MS Office 2010 (and Wine) but until now it was unclear where the problem comes from. After reading the following Linux question on reddit, docx Files leads to a blank Document in Microsoft Office (Wine) there exist a high chance that the problem is located in xdg-open which is part of xdg-utils.

More information can be found also at Wine bug report 54628, Opening files in Microsoft Word/Excel/Office 2010 results in opening an empty document.

System information

inxi -b output:

System:
  Host: test-iMac Kernel: 5.15.0-78-generic x86_64 bits: 64
    Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.24.7 Distro: Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: Apple product: iMac12,2 v: 1.0
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Apple model: Mac-942B59F58194171B v: iMac12,2
    serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Apple v: IM121.88Z.0047.B1F.1201241648
    date: 01/24/12
CPU:
  Info: quad core Intel Core i5-2500S [MCP] speed (MHz): avg: 1596
    min/max: 1600/3700
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics
    driver: i915 v: kernel
  Device-2: AMD Whistler [Radeon HD 6730M/6770M/7690M XT] driver: radeon
    v: kernel
  Device-3: Apple FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in) type: USB driver: uvcvideo
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.4 driver: X:
    loaded: ati,modesetting,radeon unloaded: fbdev,vesa gpu: radeon
    resolution: 2560x1440~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: AMD TURKS (DRM 2.50.0 / 5.15.0-78-generic LLVM 15.0.7)
    v: 4.5 Mesa 23.3~git2308080600.475527~oibaf~j (git-4755276 2023-08-08
    jammy-oibaf-ppa)
Network:
  Device-1: Broadcom NetXtreme BCM57765 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe driver: tg3
  Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath9k
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 152.75 GiB (16.4%)
Info:
  Processes: 223 Uptime: 1d 2h 49m Memory: 7.73 GiB used: 2.32 GiB (30.0%)
  Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.13
Edited by lorn10