OT Openoffice

I tried it briefly some time ago and my son uses it regularly. Neither of us has anything bad to say about it. Nothing that makes it particularly superior to MS Office either, except that it's free of course. No problem swapping files with MSO.

Or LibreOffice, which is more purely open source than OpenOffice, and closely based upon it. I highly recommend either one.

Its ability to read and save various Word formats is very good, with minor caveats:

OpenOffice/LibreOffice macros are different enough that a document which uses macros just plain won't work across platforms.

If someone has gone all out to use every last wacky formating feature of one editor or another, it won't render correctly in the other.

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www.wescottdesign.com

I like OpenOffice fine. It reads older Word files that Word won't, and exports .DOC and .XLS just fine.

I've never figured out how to format charts in Calc (the spreadsheet) the way I want, but that's because I always want to do something different.

A bargain at twice the price.

Cheers, James Arthur

I use it all the time, but it won't save as .docx and unfortunately that's what a client insisted on. I bought Office 2013 for that alone, and it regularly locks up.

Check if the teachers insists on .docx - if they do, shoot them. Slowly.

Cheers

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Syd

Or you can simply use LibreOffice rather than OpenOffice - it is significantly better in several areas, especially compatibility with MS formats (which it handles better than any version of MS Office). LibreOffice has no problem saving in docx format.

IMHO, LibreOffice is a much better office suite than MS, regardless of price. It is simpler to use, doesn't waste half the screen on a "ribbon", is perfectly capable of handling large files without crashing or corrupting them, and generates high-quality pdf files. It's single weakness at the moment is that import of PowerPoint formats is missing some features, and Impress is a bit more limited than PowerPoint.

Thanks Syd... and all the others (Pimpom, Tim, James) It's too bad it won't save in *.docx I'm guessing that is what the teachers will want. Oh well I'll give it a whirl.

George H.

OK David, Thanks. I'll give that a look see. I think not saving to docx might be a show stopper with openoffice

George H.

I'd sure make a stand about that. They can't insist on some vendor-specific file format. If they do then they should reimburse you for the totally unnecessary expense.

I am also using Apache OpenOffice (but not LibreOffice) and can only second what the others said. It works. Just make sure to turn off all this annoying auto-fill and auto- this, that and the other thing. I always uncheck _all_ those boxes after an install and then the software becomes very good.

On my most recent PC bought in December I could have added MS-Office for something like $100-200. I didn't this time.

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Yep. However, I prefer Libreoffice for policitical reasons. One gotcha with both Openoffice and Libreoffice is that the default file type is in XML. This creates HUGE files. I suggest you dive into the settings and make the default saved file types as DOC, XLS, and PPT. It's listed as "Office 2003..." or something similar.

In terms of function, I have seen some formatting issues between various Office mutations and workalikes. Google Docs is the worst, but is still worth a look. In general, compatibility is not a serious problem and only affects complex and convoluted documents and spreadsheets.

However, if you must have perfect compatibility, MS Office 2003 runs just fine on Windoze 7 (but not Windoze 8 or 10). If you use a virtual machine such as VMware or Virtual Box, you can install XP or Win 7 and run Office 2003 from there.

Also, there are other Office alternatives:

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

On Friday, 13 February 2015 18:20:32 UTC, George Herold wrote: ...

But LibreOffice DOES save in docx format.

John

Yeah I got that John, thanks...

George H.

There are formatting issues when viewing MS files in Writer. It gets confused with tables, and TOC. Other wise it's ok. As for Calc, it use to lack compatible formula functions, not sure if its still a problem.

You can get student versions of Office, might be the better alternative.

Cheers

Wrong. I just fired up Libre Office 4.3 Writer. Yeah, I know I'm behind on updates. When I hit "Save as", it offers Office 2007 format as .docx. Please take another look.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I use LibreOffice 3 and it works pretty well. It can read and write existing .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, and .ppt files without problems. Creating documents works fairly well; my only major complaint is the charting module in the spreadsheet doesn't work nearly as well as the one in Excel. It can produce about the same variety of graphs, and

*creating* a new graph works OK, but if you *change* the graph, it seems to have to redraw the whole thing several times before settling on the changes. In other words, it's slow. This may have improved in LibreOffice 4; I don't know.

As has been noted, you can set it to save things in .docx/.xlsx by default. I would suggest doing that, and (for high school or below) telling the kids to not say anything about not using Office unless asked directly. K-12 IT is often not as knowledgeable as it could be, so they may attempt to hassle you if they find out.

Matt Roberds

Yep.

Feature Comparison: LibreOffice - Microsoft Office It shows 17 functions out of 461 that are unique to Excel 2013. I don't think I've ever used any of them. 3 of the missing functions are planned to be added in LibreOffice 4.5. The areas in red are unsupported features. These should not be a problem unless you're accustomed to a specific way of creating a speadsheet, or have automated these spreadsheet creation and manipulation features into Excel macros.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Thanks Matt, The few times I've tried it I've absolutely hated the way Excel does graphs. If Libreoffice is worse I'll never notice. ('cause I'm never going to try it :^)

George H.

Libre Office != Open Office.

But also, a colleague tells me that the Libre Office .docx isn't fully compatible.

Cheers

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Syd

Hi George,

I Totally agree

But openoffice can write docx as well as libreoffice. Who told you that they can not? Just try it.

Marte

A part time lurker ;-)

also any Micksoft product that can read .docx can also read .doc so there should be no reason to exclude .doc.

Mark