The latest version of Open Office in the db is 3.0.1 and it says to install cabextract before running the installer. The version I am downloading to install is 3.1.0, does anyone know if I still need to install cabextract first for that version?
Why exactly do you need to install the Windows version of OpenOffice.org? There's a Linux version available (or are you "dogfooding" OOo for Wine?). OpenOffice 3.1.0 is still a 3.x version, so it's unlikely that that dependency has changed (in the Linux version, of course).
In the end it's simple saving to a file, so I don't think the Windows version would save it correctly. Try installing Abiword, opening the document in there and exporting it to RTF in Abiword? (Abiword is tiny enough to exist alongside OOo, as well as open simpler documents really quickly.)