Open Office with MS Office?

[JerryM]

My new computer has a trial version of MS Office. I have downloaded, but not installed, Open Office.
Can I run those two programs without conflict?

Anyone here had much experience with Open Office?

Thanks,
Jerry

[BartPe]

Yes, OpenOffice is very nice. I use it exclusively.

You can keep both on your computer, no problem at all. It's like having Internet Exoplorer and Opera on a single computer.

Cheers

[Arup]

Open Office will do everything for you that MS Office does, so my vote would be for OO.

[Sputnik]

I have both installed on my Windows installation. Since I now mainly use Linux I got used to OpenOffice.org and you just can do everything with it. It's fairly easy to use, and got some nifty things Microsoft Office lacks :) Just try it out, it's free ;)

[Bob D]

I had StarOffice (Sun's closed source version of OO) & M$ Office on my puter simultaneously for a few months without incident while test driving the former.
(Have since dumped M$ Office)

[JerryM]

Thanks, All.
In an effort to save buying MS Office, etc, I downloaded Open Office. When I tested it by sending a document to my other computer via email, and attempted to open it from the attachment, I got the response,

"This program does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Folder Options Control Panel."

I note that the attach which I sent has an odt ending.

I went to Control Panel Folders and put in a new file type "odt." However, it did not solve the problem so I did not do it right.

How do I do it so that Word recognizes it or the document can be opened on another computer? I need to be able to email documents.

Thanks,
Jerry

[uqrhmbfd]

-{ Quote: "
How do I do it so that Word recognizes it or the document can be opened on another computer? I need to be able to email documents.
Thanks, Jerry" }-
Hi

MSWord is not gonna recognize a document saved by OpenOffice if this document is saved in OpenOffice format. BUT... :) OpenOffice allows one to save a document in various formats, among which MSWord format. Just click on file, save as... and so on.

The other way is to save the document in AcrobatReader format - this can be done in one click from the menu bar in openOffice 2.0.

Try the various options, allow the program its learning curve since it's new to you. Give it a chance, it will repay very soon.

Cheers

[jhgtrrsyrsrsrstr]

Also, you may have a look here (http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/)

[JerryM]

uqrhmbfd,
Thank you so much. I saved it as a MS Word document and it opened.

I hope I don't have to spend the $ for MS Office. I think that Open Office will take care of my needs. I may need some help from time to time.

Best and thanks again.
Jerry

[yrfsyryr]

-{ Quote: "MSWord is not gonna recognize a document saved by OpenOffice if this document is saved in OpenOffice format. BUT... :) OpenOffice allows one to save a document in various formats, among which MSWord format. Just click on file, save as... and so on.
The other way is to save the document in AcrobatReader format - this can be done in one click from the menu bar in openOffice 2.0." }-
Of course, the OpenOffice format document would also easily open on the destination machine provided OpenOffice was installed on that second machine also. then, OpenOffice would open the doc without any hesitation.

Cheers

[yrjgckgck]

-{ Quote: "I hope I don't have to spend the $ for MS Office.
Jerry" }-
I hope also. Especially since I just read that M$ is gonna stop tech support of XPHome machines as soon as january 2007.

I feel cheated on that. I won't ever buy M$ softs again in my life. :(

[JerryM]

-{ Quote: "Of course, the OpenOffice format document would also easily open on the destination machine provided OpenOffice was installed on that second machine also. then, OpenOffice would open the doc without any hesitation.

Cheers" }-
Yes that would take care of that if the other machine had OO. It is easy though to save as a Word doc.

I had not heard that MS was going to stop support of XP in 2007. That will cause a storm of protest I think, and they may relent and stretch it out a few more years. Who knows?

Thanks for the replies.
Jerry

[Huwge]

Anyone know if its possible to install just certain parts of OOffice?. I would only be interested in the Word equivelent and my daughter needs access excel for schoolwork ?

[iceni60]

-{ Quote: "Anyone know if its possible to install just certain parts of OOffice?. I would only be interested in the Word equivelent and my daughter needs access excel for schoolwork ?" }-
Abiword is supposed to be very good, maybe better then OOo's word program, i know it's much faster. it's used in Gnome Office (http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office/win32/) which "empowers you with "best in class" productivity applications available as GNU Free Software" rather then one big program which does everything.

-{ Quote: "AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft® Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks." }-
http://www.abisource.com/

[ykuyuf]

-{ Quote: "Anyone know if its possible to install just certain parts of OOffice?. I would only be interested in the Word equivelent and my daughter needs access excel for schoolwork ?" }-
yes, you can of course choose among the components to install.
The install routine is easily understandable and user-friendly.
Cheers

[xhftqare]

-{ Quote: "Abiword is supposed to be very good, maybe better then OOo's word program, i know it's much faster. it's used in Gnome Office (http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office/win32/) which "empowers you with "best in class" productivity applications available as GNU Free Software" rather then one big program which does everything.
http://www.abisource.com/" }-
Good point, but I don't know about the compatibility issue with, for instance, MSWord.
Also, I don't know about the possibilities of spell check on this project. I can use OpenOffice in various languages (also possible in AbiWord !? I don't know aboutthat), and also use the corresponding dictionaries for spell check, which is of course a very important feature.

[yufdtgzstedyytrd]

There's a new update of openOffice available right now. Version 2.01. It's a release candidate.

Changelogs and bugfixes are reported Here (http://development.openoffice.org/releases/2.0.1.html)

Cheers

[JerryM]

Does Open Office recognize MS Word? If I made a MS Word document and sent it to a machine that did not have Word, but did have Open Office what would be necessary to open the Word document?

Thanks,
Jerry

[Bob D]

"what would be necessary to open the Word document?"

A double click.
OO does a fine job reading M$ Office files.
For an OO user to send a file to the M$ user, he/she must "save as" a .doc, .xls, etc.

[JerryM]

-{ Quote: ""what would be necessary to open the Word document?"

A double click.
OO does a fine job reading M$ Office files.
For an OO user to send a file to the M$ user, he/she must "save as" a .doc, .xls, etc." }-
Great, Bob. It appears that OO is a fine program and substitute for MS.
Thanks,
Jerry

[Bob D]

-{ Quote: "Great, Bob. It appears that OO is a fine program and substitute for MS" }-
Indeed it is.
As per my previous post, I ran both proggies simultaneously during StarOffice test drive. Was taken by SO and subsequently uninstalled M$ Office. That was a couple years ago. Haven't regretted it once.
PS: If you do find you like OO, you may want to take a look at StarOffice. Functionally same as OO, just a bit more polished with a few more bells / whistles, better dictionary, thesaurus, etc. Small money. (I got sick of the MS Office upgrades for hundreds of $.)

[Bob D]

Postscript to above.
(This IS a security forum after all)
OO/SO pro: Not susceptible to Office's macro viruses!
Con: IF you have a lot of pre written macros, you may not be able to use them (could be problematic for some users).

Cheers

[Dreamcatcher]

Heres another MS Office alternative:

http://www.aspose.com/Default.aspx

But it does reguire the net frameWork,

Hope this helps

[Dreamcatcher]

-{ Quote: "Heres another MS Office alternative:

http://www.aspose.com/Default.aspx

But it does reguire the net frameWork,

Hope this helps" }-nice to try, but is very pricey!

[iceni60]

i was going to post this before but didn't because i haven't used any of the programs mentioned in this thread. i have got OOo but don't use it. anyway, if you only have OOo and you use it to make a doc, or whatever else or does, then send it to someone using MS programs it might not render correctly. you have to check how it looks in Word or Excel then possibly make corrections to the rendering.

i think the problems start when you do something more then just plain text like add pictures or even bullet points.

the reason MS software can work perfectly with OOo but not the other way around is because OOo is open source and MS programs are closed source. i think in the future the standard doc file will be OpenDocument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument) so there won't be any rendering/opening problems in 100 years when someone needs to open some public record etc.

here's a podcast where they talk about OOo and how it works with MS software.
it has lots of swearing so don't listen if you find it too much for you. an episode was given away on the cover of a UK magazine so i suppose it's OK for Wilders'.

the OOo stuff starts at around 7.07 mins.
http://audio.lugradio.org/season3/ep6/lugradio-s03e06-030106-high.mp3?podcast

[JimIT]

-{ Quote: "
if you only have OOo and you use it to make a doc, or whatever else or does, then send it to someone using MS programs it might not render correctly. you have to check how it looks in Word or Excel then possibly make corrections to the rendering.

i think the problems start when you do something more then just plain text like add pictures or even bullet points.
" }-

This, indeed used to be a limitation as far as I'm concerned. With the release of Oo 2.0, MANY of these incompatiblities are fixed. I had the same "bullet-point" problems, and they have since gone away after upgrading from 1.1 to 2.0.

YMMV.