Do any of you have M$ Word running in present form?
My old man has a bunch of .dox stuff saved. He has complicated large files saved that are not supported by any of the FOSS conversion tools. I've tried Libre office, Abi Word, and every command line tool and converter I can find. These are entire book sized files.
I have a W10 machine with Word. Is extracting the .exe and running it with wine feasible without making an epic mess or massive project of this?
Have you tried the online version of MS Office? I'm not sure, but I think there's a free version. Depending on the file, you might be able to convert it to another format, then use a FOSS tool going forwards.
I was thinking along the same lines. Use the online version available via portal.office.com, and use that to convert everything to something more FOSS-friendly.
This is what I would recommend as well. Try to convert within Word to an older version or open version that's likely to be compatible with other software. Test one and see if it converts okay.