Open Office good alt to MS Office?

The Libre people forked from the OO people. As is the case with such projects they had disagreements.

 

I use Microsoft Office but have tried LibreOffice, and I've put it on my Mom's PC. It can save in Office 2010 formats so it's good enough for her. Sometimes format stuff may change if you open the file in Office, even though it is saved in an Office format, but it's good enough.

 

Tried OO once. Faster than new MSO, didn't eat HD space, but had problem with file format.

 

I use Libre Office but I also use Kingsoft Office free. I have had Kingsoft successfully read Microsoft Office files that would choke on Libre Office.

Edit: kingsoft Office free is only 39MB.

http://www.kingsoftstore.com/kingsoft-office-freeware.html

 

I've had better luck with OO than Libre, but I find that both have some issues either displaying and/or printing .xlsx or .docx files. Kingsoft handles both file types better, at least in our case, have it on both of my kids pc's. They do many reports and presentations for school, and haven't complained yet.

 

Just my opinion...

OpenOffice/LibreOffice is an amazing piece of software, especially considering the price tag. It is probably one of the most impressive examples of FOSS on the desktop; possibly one of the most impressive examples of desktop software period (again considering the price tag). I use it all the time, and so far it has never given me trouble.

However, it also is what it is, which is a FOSS office suite that is incompatible (or at least not very compatible) with a lot of proprietary formats, and does not offer all the features of more advanced office suites geared towards businesses. As such, I do not believe it is a good MS Office replacement, at least not in a lot of cases. IMO it stands very well on its own, but barely stands at all in the role of more expensive commercial office suites.

 

Very well said....

 

Same here. Been using v. 3.3 and it works great. I don't know anything about this "Apache" company.

 

LibreOffice is great, but if you work with people using Microsoft Office and you need to share documents and collaborate, then you may have compatibility issues - at least I did several years back when I first tried OpenOffice.

I like LibreOffice Portable for occasional use. If I was using LibreOffice as my main office suite instead of Microsoft Office, then I'd install the non-portable version.

 

There are better/more lightweight alternatives to replace Word and PowerPoint, like Kingsoft Presentation Free and AbiWord Portable.

 

Libre office supports Doc and Docx formats so it's good to go.

 

Well it does, but if you open a file someone wrote with Microsoft Word or Excel with LibreOffice or vice versa, it may look a little different, and margins or fonts or table layouts, table of contents or something else may be screwed up. Anyway, that's been my experience.

 

AbiWord development has been very slow of late - current version is still 2.86 - so unless they get their act together the project will be off to Shady Pines soon...

http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/2012/Aug/0020.html

http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/2012/Oct/0009.html

 

im using kingsoft office free, its an excellent alternative to MS office
-ttp://www.kingsoftstore.com/kingsoft-office-freeware.html

There is a free version of softmaker office 2012 available
-ttp://freeoffice.com/

 

I allways used microsoft s. Because i use android asus transformer with free kingsoft office. I started using kingsoft office on the pc also. I now only use outlook.

 

yes but kingsoft has only english or chinese GUI so is not a great choice for other users in the world. I use Softmaker FreeOffice and it has native GUI and speelcheck in almost every language, it is small and effective even if with some xlsx or docx fails as Libre or OO does; but i prefer 80mb installation than 400 needed for LiO and OO making the same job
If I was english I wuold use Kingsoft beacuse it seems more M$ compatible

 

No, it's not.

Because if people around you use MS Office and require that you send them files.
And these files must retain 100% fidelity to their original intent/format.
Then, no you cannot use OO/LO as an alternative.

If it's for your own sake, then yes.

Mrk

 

MS Office users can install converters to open and read odf. documents. Beginning with MS Office 2013, the format will be natively supported. There is no reason whatsoever why a common open office document standard won't work - unless Microsoft didn't want one.

 

ODF documents are already supported by Office. In the case of Office 2007, the support was included in the SP3 Service Pack, release one year ago. Office 2010 has included support for ODF since it was released in June 2010.

But this doesn´t mean that the "conversion" is perfect. The ODF specifications can be implemented in different ways, and have been evolving over the years, so that there are several "levels" of support.

The conversion problems arise mainly in the other direction, when a document created in Office is opened in Libre/Open, or when the same document is edited in both systems. There many incompatibilities and lots of work involved. It is definitely not a practical process.

 

That works. You open ODF in MS, that's fine.
But sending someone an MS file created by LO/OO, no no.

And normal people do not know what ODF is, so if you send them that, they go into a state of shock. But if your colleagues/workers/business partners can and are willing to do the conversions, then okay. It's a big if.

My personal example - the book business. Most editors/agents are strictly MS oriented; there's not even a question of a doc not being THE doc.

Mrk

 

Will any products accomplish that other than MS Mrk? Because I agree, the "other guy" may not have the inclination to hold up their end.

Also, I'm thinking about replacing OO with SoftMaker after hearing all the praise. I need only a word processor and draw apps. No Database, Spreadsheet or Presentation apps. Is SoftMaker good with those 2 things?

 

Yes, my experience with companies is MS Office is the gold standard and it is considered unprofessional to use anything else. Microsoft would have to not just support the open document standard they would have make it the default in Office to make it acceptable. Since they have a lock on the market why would they do that and open the door to free and open source office suites?

 

You're right. I used LibreOffice (portable edition) for a long time, hoping with every new version that compatibility would get better, but in the end I got tired of all the mess I always had to fix when opening with MS Office the ppt/pptx or doc/docx files created with LibreOffice.

So I started to look for alternatives, and Kingsoft Presentation Free + AbiWord Portable + Gnumeric Portable offered what I wanted. Perfect compatibility with MS Office so far in my tests. And way better performance as well.

I still keep LO Portable around, but I rarely use it.

 

After three months of using Libre portable, I find the program easy to use, easy to set it up to open MS Office files automatically and easy to create files in Office formats. Thats all I really need, I haven't had any problems.

Bo

 

I used LibreOffice and made a junk document with a centered bold title, text, and some bullet points. I saved it in .docx format and opened it in Word 2010. The only formatting that changed was the default Word line spacing applied to the document, but it was otherwise identical. I think they have really improved formatting issues, especially if you save it in a Microsoft format to begin with instead of .odf.