Spreadsheets and docs created in OO and saved to a MS format tend to be ok (but I've seen issues with fonts - and footnotes IIRC). Opening MS docs in OO less successful.
The OO powerpoint equiv is the weakest part in my experience (I've not tried it for a while mind - maybe it's improved). A whole world of pain a year or so ago.
Office is one of the MS products that seems pretty good - another is their mice (I've a stash of Intellimouse in the drawer incase they stop making them :-))
Darren
Newbies, yes, much easier as much of the complex stuff is hidden and doesn't confuse.
Experienced users have to get over the "wtf!" that happens when they first open it - most seem more than happy after a while.
Plenty of really heave users here who would never go back now. Office 2010 improves on things - 2007 was a first stab. Not sure we even offer or support 2003 now tbh.
Darren
A teacher friend of mine trying to electronically submit applications forms for new posts in OO/Linux, came rather unstuck when these forms (common to a few education authorities) written in Word, demanded that the entered text be placed inside word table cell 'form fields'.
These are supported in OO/Linux, but in there the fields had their own rules on placement inside the table cells, which precluded their being any space to actually enter the data directly and see that it had been entered correctly. Messing about checking this took my friend hours, and there were still some fields he could not submit.
Taking the form across to OO/Windows using the same release version of Open Office, I found that these form fields were completable in a slightly different way - double clicking brought up a dialog box with a contained entry field, but not in the Linux version. Strange. Still a mess though.
In the end 'position is everything'. People are writing documents for presentation, and the layout schema language and behavior for word processors is obviously not as locked down universally as it is, say, for different web browsers with standardised HTML.
If there is interchange expected with Office (or OO) users, then the only real answer IMO is getting the same program yourself. Or, waste time....
Thanks for all the opinions. Really appreciated.
dmc@puffin. (D.M.Chapman) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
Expect that between versions of MS Office, too.
SWMBO applied for a job a while back. The application form was sent through as a Word .doc (definitely created in Office, probably XP)
She opened it in 2k7 on Vista. The formatting was utterly unusable, and the document had spread to about 95 pages.
I opened it in OpenOffice on Linux. It was utterly workable. Completed, PDF'd and sent. Job jobbed.
I think it's PowerPoint which causes me most angst in 2007. Just trying to thing off the top of my head why...
- Files I'm working with are frequently worked on by others; even though I always disable *every* bloody Autocorrect option there is (default being all "on") other (less PPT-literate) users don't, and frequently I find files I've been working on get totally marmalised unwittingly into Microsoft's warped idea of how they should look - never mind the user's house style.
- There are still plenty of users of v2003 out there (and I'm including major multinational corporate environments here) and agencies I work for have a requirement to be able to supply files in both 2003 and 2007 format. Now, the MS patch to enable interconversion between the two formats is definitely *not* fully reliable - notably with charts - and I have personally had to spend *days* recreating massive PPT files which have been screwed by this process.
- I often come across a need to customise charts created in PPT - eg to be able to use corporate branding colours rather than the 40-colour palette imposed by MS - in the old days you could create the chart, then at the end 'ungroup' it and customise away. However this 'ungroup' option has been removed from PPT 2007 by MS. WTF? Recently several people in an office I where I was working were scratching their heads over this one... the solution: I emailed the file to myself at home; saved the slide in PPT 2003, 'ungrouped' the chart, and emailed it back to the office to rounds of applause. I believe the office now maintains one machine running v 2003 for 'emergency' use.
I'm sure there's more... :(
David
"John" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
We use OpenOffice exclusively in the business, and have for years. No problems whatsoever with exchanging documents back-and-forth. (You really shouldn't be sending customers .DOC/.XLS anyway - unless they absolutely need to edit them - send PDFs)
Is it perfect? No. But neither's MS Office - by a LONG way. I've done a separate reply that gives my experience of formatting compatibility, so won't touch that here. I prefer MS Office for outlining, for example, but it's just a slightly different way of doing things - easy to get your head around.
One thing worth knowing is that OpenOffice is in the throes of forking at the moment, following Oracle's purchase of Sun. The DocumentFoundation's LibreOffice is in 3.3 beta at the moment - and is the "true" successor to the current OpenOffice.org 3.2. I don't know what Oracle will do longer term, but I think the community will move to LibreOffice generally.
It's worth remembering that if you're buying just a copy of Office that Home-and-Office O2k10 doesn't include Outlook. For that, you need Home- and-Business. At that point, it starts to become worthwhile considering buying it as an OEM licence with a new PC...
Sorry, bad form etc. Forgot to add...
I don't really use PPT, so can't comment on OO's presentation tools. Spreadsheets, I'm not a heavy-heavy power user - usually because there's far better ways of doing most of the things heavy-heavy power users of spreadsheets do... Word processing I do use reasonably heavily, but not for mailmerge etc.
But - at the end of the day - try 'em both.
OpenOffice is free anyway. MS Office you can download a 30-day trial.
Install 'em, try 'em, use 'em - see which YOU prefer.
You need to speak to my wife about my paroxisms of incoherent rage trying to get Word to do what I want. I suspect I have been angrier then than at any other time. And I'm a kind of angry person. I would cheerfully watch Bill Gates flayed and boiled alive in brine made from his own urine because of some of the things that Word does.
Heh, I'm not disagreeing with that - just that OO annoys me even more :)
MS Office appears to be best of a crap bunch.
WP5.1 ftw :)
I'll stick to LaTeX
:)
... I suspect OpenOffice is doomed.
Ah, OK. OO doesn't bother me that much because of how much I paid for it.
Never used it, but my wife (who was a very senior secretary) swears by it.
Never used it, but I prefer markup langauges for serious documentation. WYSIWYG is OK for shopping lists.
In article , Adrian scribeth thus
I suppose MS office like most all MS stuff makes some money for PC suppliers so these are what will be sold and people will tend to use as they think thats what we have to use and thats the standard so...
when they switched to 2010. I had assumed that since they repackaged the low end version:
Oddly that was one of the goals it seems - but it backfired a bit. It has been said that if you have never used the old version, the new one is easier to learn. However the problem comes if you know an old version!
(I still use Office XP (with add on format converters for later version compatibility) for day to day niff naff myself, and doubt I would have any difficulty moving to OO for my needs. Excel is decent enough, word sucks big time! (much prefer WordPerfect for complex or technical documents))
A couple of days ago I downloaded LO 3.3 latest release, uninstalled OO and installed LO. It picked up the mods that I'd made to OO in spite of the User files having gone from Docs and Settings - not too worried as it saved some work.
OO 3.2 took, to open a spreadsheet, about 15 - 16s; LO takes 25 - 26s, so back to OO2.x days! For comparison, Excel 2003 takes 2s!
It'll be interesting to see how the Final of LO 3.3 performs and if
Probably because they did not develop most of it ;-)
Yup MS keyboards are not bad either...
It has its quirks, but works well enough for most purposes.
They're as good/bad as each other. Just different sets of issues.
If you want to move docs between the two then make sure you have all the right fonts installed on both machines. I've had issues with drawings not appearing the same.
Just recently OO hung completely when trying to import a Word doc.
MBQ
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