"Open Office" software

[Dymphna]

Updated my Java the other day and it came with what is basically an advertisement for "Open Office"

The description:

OpenOffice.org can:

• read, edit and save to Microsoft Office file formats.
• store all of your data in the non-proprietary Open Document Format.
• export documents to Acrobat PDF and to Flash.
• new add-ons offer blogging, faxing, report builder, smaller file sizes.

Does anyone know this software, have an opinions, reviews, etc.?

I have Office 2007, so I doubt this program is very useful for me. But it's free and I am curious about it.

 

[Gwydion]

It is a great product. It is basically everything you get with Microsoft Office, except Open Office has more features and most argue is more intuitive.

I suspect it will replace Microsoft Office in the near future.

 

[Otter]

Updated my Java the other day and it came with what is basically an advertisement for "Open Office"

The description:

Does anyone know this software, have an opinions, reviews, etc.?

I have Office 2007, so I doubt this program is very useful for me. But it's free and I am curious about it.

I use it quite a bit..can't beat it for free and its every bit as good as the Office Suite from MS.

 

[PatricksDad]

Biggest problem

I have Office 2007, so I doubt this program is very useful for me. But it's free and I am curious about it.

The only problem I have seen with this product is it is unable to open the current version of the Office Suite.

But damn, you have to love open source applications

 

[Dymphna]

The only problem I have seen with this product is it is unable to open the current version of the Office Suite.

But damn, you have to love open source applications

So it won't open the 2007 documents? Well, since I always end up having to save them in the old format so that I can email them to people who don't have 2007, that won't be a huge hardship...can those people open documents created in open office?

 

[jrt_ms1995]

On the new desktop I just bought, and laptop I bought for my daughter, I deleted MS Works and the trial version of MS Office Student as quickly as possible and installed OpenOffice. You can also get versions for MacOS & Linux (and likely some others). And, if you don't trust free software, you can buy it from Sun as StarOffice for $69.95.

 

[GWguy]

So it won't open the 2007 documents? Well, since I always end up having to save them in the old format so that I can email them to people who don't have 2007, that won't be a huge hardship...can those people open documents created in open office?

Yes, you can do a "save as" in MS Office format.

 

[migtig]

Yes, you can do a "save as" in MS Office format.

The giant loaded it on my home laptop and it's great. You just have to remember to "save as".

 

[jrt_ms1995]

So it won't open the 2007 documents? Well, since I always end up having to save them in the old format so that I can email them to people who don't have 2007, that won't be a huge hardship...can those people open documents created in open office?

Yes, it will open Office 2007 documents (if you get the current version, OpenOffice 3.0), and, yes, Office 2007 and earlier will open OpenOffice documents (though you may have to do it from the menu if the file extensions differ.)

 

[huntr1]

Updated my Java the other day and it came with what is basically an advertisement for "Open Office"

The description:

Does anyone know this software, have an opinions, reviews, etc.?

I have Office 2007, so I doubt this program is very useful for me. But it's free and I am curious about it.

I installed it on my laptop before I installed the office disk we have.

 

[Dymphna]

I installed it on my laptop before I installed the office disk we have.

So are you saying that you find Office 2000 more useful?

BTW, if you want to install Office 2007 on the laptop, we DO own a copy of that

 

[G1G4]

I use Open Office. A bit less bulky than Microsoft Office, but it works good.

 

[CAE]

Does anyone know this software, have an opinions, reviews, etc.?

I love it... haven't used MS Office at home for years, since OpenOffice was stable. I use MS Office at work, and moving documents between MSOffice and OpenOffice works well, unless you're getting *really* fancy and using some complicated features. I'm sure with OpenOffice 3 now supporting the .docx format, the interchange is better, but I haven't tested it.

If you already have MSOffice, there's not much reason to use it, but I'll never give Microsoft my money, when this is free!

 

[David]

If you just need a word processor and don't want to shell out the bucks for WORD, and don't need all the bulk of Open Office, try AbiWord, a freebie:

AbiWord

It was a PC Mag pick for Best Free Software

 

[forceofnature]

The giant loaded it on my home laptop and it's great. You just have to remember to "save as".

Somewhere in the preferences you can set it to save documents as MSoffice by default. I did it on mine because I kept forgetting to save as.

 

[BOP]

I reloaded XP on this computer (1.6 GB processor/256 MB RAM - I know, I didn't have it built). Left Office off and downloaded OpenOffice. Haven't had a chance to use it much, but was impressed at how little time it took to download and install (even though I left the database and a couple of other functions out of the install).

Can't wait until Microsoft gets their grubby meat-skinners on it via hostile takeover or lawsuit. NOT!!

 

[BOP]

I've had one problem with OO3...did a copy/paste from a text document (*.txt) to an OO3 document. Could not get it to paste more than the first sentence in the paragraph. I gave up after a half dozen attempts. Will try a different text document today.

 

[huntr1]

So are you saying that you find Office 2000 more useful?

BTW, if you want to install Office 2007 on the laptop, we DO own a copy of that

I loaded the Office disk because I wanted Publisher.

I vastly prefer the Windows 2000 version of Office to the Vista version.

 

[forceofnature]

OK here is a tip if you use Power Point at work and use Open Office Impress. Do not use animations in the presentation if you want to use in MS PowerPoint. I had done a great presentation in Impress then put it on the company PC FAIL. All my animated text stacked on top of each other on every slide with animaiton. Not sure if that was fixed yet but I dont take those chances anymore.

I have had no other issues with Open Office and the whole family uses it for school and work.

 

[BOP]

One irritation I've noticed in the spreadsheet is that when you press "delete" to clear the contents of a cell, up pops a window that asks you what kind of stuff you want to clear from the cell. Um...everything? I copy/paste forms into the spreadsheet (years of habit - I hate WORD. It's always been much easier to manipulate stuff in excel than it is to drive myself crazy trying to get WORD to do what I want). I do that A LOT, so it gets to be more than a minor inconvenience after a while.