Open Office vs. M$ Office

[n5gooner]

What do people think, considering using Open Office on my new laptop, I guess its compatable with M$ Office from a .doc and .xls point of view...

[Cliphead]

Version 2 is very good, I use it exclusively now.

[n5gooner]

and is it compatable with M$ office documents?

[chicane]

I can't speak for Excel compatibility.

The Word compatibility, although a good effort, makes a right mess out of most things relating to sections, headers and footers and vector diagrams. And failing that, it'll also manage to modify the original page layout due to differences in font metrics.

I considered doing the same as you but the risk of sending a client a document that appears considerably different within their copy of Word to my copy of OO Writer is too high.

[Mordac]

Just go for MS Office - it's free (if borrowed from the right sources ) and cheap if you get the MS Action Pack.

[Moose423956]

and is it compatable with M$ office documents?

For simple documents there should be no problem moving docs between MSOffice and OpenOffice. Where it starts to get problematic is for complex documents and where documents are transferred from one to the other frequently - in those circumstances, the formatting sometimes gets stuffed up.

[MrsGoof]

.rtf

[Sockpuppet]

I would use Open Office more but find that everyone seems to be in love with Excel where I work and seems to want to send me access and excel database and spreadsheets tied together.

[LegendsWear7]

I believe Office 2007's native file format is open XML-based so Open Office will have no problem.


Death to the Beast.

[chicane]

I believe Office 2007's native file format is open XML-based so Open Office will have no problem.

Don't get too excited.

The problem lies less with the ability of OO to read the file format, and more with its ability to correctly lay out on page what it's read...