OpenOffice anyone us it ?

[Gordon]

We use OO on Nix platforms where the customer doesn't want to install
CrossOver and use Office XP, but, there are more than just rare
differences, there are a lot of formatting differences if you do
anything more than just text.

Perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps there's too much complication and bloat
in MS Office documents......

 

[Gordon]

As long as you keep it really simple, OO.o is OK. But all of its
components have problems with stuff that's easy in MSFT Office. E.g.
The Excel TODAY() function, vital to my spreadsheets, doesn't work in
OO.o Calc.

When you say the TODAY() doesn't "work" on OO, what do you mean? I've just
tried it on both Excel 2003 and OO Calc 2.01 and they do exactly the same
thing.......

 

[Gordon]

In - Bobb - had this to say:

It was ages ago - a couple years back when I last had really sat down
and tried it to give a review of it - and it was slow... Formatting -
as you're now well aware - is your major problem if you want to share
the documents with anyone who's a Microsoft Office user. Slow...
SLOW... The Windows version was slower than the version I installed
on the then-known-as-Mandrake and now-known-as-Mandriva. Either way,
it was slow...

Version 2.02 is current - almost no difference in speed between that and MS
Office......

 

[Leythos]

Perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps there's too much complication and bloat
in MS Office documents......

Depends on how you look at it. I've seen some impressive word document
templates that would give PageMaker a run for the money. Word 2003 has
some very nice features/ability that most users will never use, but, for
those of us doing layouts and complex documents, OO is not going to
allow sharing with MS Office users without a loss of a lot of
formatting.

Don't get me wrong, when it comes to businesses that don't work with a
lot of MS Office external documents I like OO or StarOffice. What I
really like is the ability to run Office XP under Linux using CrossOver.

 

[Walterius]

Sorry. Calc cannot format the result the way I need it (number of days, such
as 10). It formats it as a date (01/10/00). Excel 2002 handles the
formatting correctly. I don't have Excel 2003.

 

[Walterius]

It is crap for the poor person who dislikes everything MS makes! No

wonder it is free because no one will buy it. In fact some corporations
get paid to install it in their system because it is completely
rubbish!!.

When I had a website on the metaphysical meanings of the book of Revelation,
I used to get crap like that from the religious right. "Walter, you are
going to Hell," etc. They were *absolutely convinced* that I was wrong. But
they did not know what they did not know--and they still don't, whether
their Religious Right-ness is regarding Revelation or OO.

IMO, John is a member of the OO Religious Right Bigots Corps.

 

[Gordon]

Sorry. Calc cannot format the result the way I need it (number of
days, such as 10). It formats it as a date (01/10/00). Excel 2002
handles the formatting correctly. I don't have Excel 2003.

Right-click-format cells-date and choose "1" doesn't do it?

 

[Doug]

Version 2.02 is current - almost no difference in speed
between that and MS Office......

I concur...OO is well worth the download.

Doug

 

[paulmd]

When you install it you get asked about file type association and IMO
the question could have a *much* verbose explaination of the
consequences of your choice, expecially for the non-computer type who
wants to try it.

I forget the wording but yIMO ou *DON'T* want to make microsoft
filetypes the defulat for OO because it makes flipping between MS WOrd
and OO a pain if you are used to clicking on a file name to start the
associated program. You might also lose some formatting, but that is
rare now.

Picking the MS filetypes also makes it hard to use the native OOo file
formats, which are the way to go for the long run.

My POV here is for the user that doesn't really know how file type
assiciations work or mean, let lonke know how to switch them.

 

[paulmd]

Hurk. Pressed send buttom before I wrote response.

When you install it you get asked about file type association and IMO
the question could have a *much* verbose explaination of the
consequences of your choice, expecially for the non-computer type who
wants to try it.

The latest versions actually say that you don't want to associate OO
with the MS office file types if you are just evaluating. Don't know
when exa\ctly they put it in there, but it's there now.

 

[mamamia]

Just a quick general question... I'm downloading ithe Windows version
now and wondering if others have used it - if so how did you like it ?

It's wonderful, does everything I need it to do and never had
compatibility problems with it for MS office files.

Is it very compatible with Office 2003 ?

Dunno, try it and see how compatible they are.

Can they co-exist ?

Yes, with no problem at all.