OpenOffice

**Caius** · 11-24-2007, 01:39

Is OpenOffice good? I formatted my laptop and I don't have MS Office, nor I want to do some illegal actions.

**Lemur** · 11-24-2007, 03:55

OpenOffice is pretty darn good. Word of advice, and it applies to MS Office users as well as OO users: try to save your word processing docs as RTF. This allows for wonderful compatibility not only with oddball programs, but also between different versions of MS Office.

That's my document-preservation tip for the day.

**Mouzafphaerre** · 11-24-2007, 17:54

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Open Office rocks.

I use the Draw application to produce publication quality music scores from raw EMFs generated by my choice of typesetting program.

About the RTF bit... Good for formatted text only documents I'm afraid. If you have tables etc. they will disappear once saved as RTF, AFAIK.
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**macsen rufus** · 11-24-2007, 18:33

I also have OpenOffice rather than fork out for the poor-quality imitation from MS

I mostly use it for Calc (the Excell equivalent), and as long as you remember that Excell short-cuts don't always work, you'll be fine

(I do miss my Ctrl_D for "fill down" but that's about it to be honest....)

If it's stuff I know I will only use on my own machine, I save it in OO format (.ODS), if it needs to be portable then it will save into a selection of XL formats, too...

**CrossLOPER** · 11-24-2007, 19:01

Open Office is good, but to my knowledge it has minor issues with formatting and conversion to MS office files. Things change size, font, disappear. Nothing too bad.

**Whacker** · 11-24-2007, 19:58

It's not a bad suite at all. I have a few usability complaints here and there, and while Calc isn't bad, there's still nothing that comes close to Excel in terms of spreadsheet programs. I wouldn't be so sure about deploying it in an Enterprise situation, but for a home user, it should do just fine.

**Lemur** · 11-24-2007, 20:02

Originally Posted by CrossLOPER

Open Office is good, but to my knowledge it has minor issues with formatting and conversion to MS office files. Things change size, font, disappear. Nothing too bad.

A problem due entirely to Microsoft publishing contradictory and incomplete specs for its document formats. Don't get me started.

**edyzmedieval** · 11-25-2007, 13:34

I use OpenOffice for my school work, and no problems whatsoever so far. The only thing is that the exporting and format issues are really bugging me.

**Bijo** · 11-25-2007, 21:27

Originally Posted by Lemur

A problem due entirely to Microsoft publishing contradictory and incomplete specs for its document formats. Don't get me started.

Please, do get started: I would like to know

**CrossLOPER** · 11-26-2007, 01:03

Originally Posted by edyzmedieval

I use OpenOffice for my school work, and no problems whatsoever so far. The only thing is that the exporting and format issues are really bugging me.

I assume that your teachers don't accept OpenOffice formats either?

**edyzmedieval** · 11-27-2007, 08:28

They haven't even heard of OpenOffice, so every time I have to port to Word or Powerpoint my presentations.

**Mouzafphaerre** · 11-27-2007, 15:56

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You could just save them as .doc, .ppt etc. you know.

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**Ciaran** · 12-08-2007, 14:06

I´ve tried the text editing component once, but it was awfully slow when I imported a Word document. Even saving in the Open Office format and reloading didn´t do any good.