Open Office to Word....any problems?

I was wondering if anyone who uses open office for word processing regularly views documents sent to them from people who sent them in ms word format, and if there were any problems with the format conversion? Likewise, do you have any problems with other people being able to correctly view your open office documents if they are using ms word? Does any of the format/layout get messed up? I currently have Corel Wordperfect 12, and it has messed up my documents in the past trying to convert them back and forth between the wordperfect and ms word formats, so I was thinking of switching to open office. Thanks for your replies.

 

I changed to OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 from MS Office 2003, and didn't have any problem until now...

 

I am also interested to know about this and a step ahead about Power Ponit as well. I am afraid to prepare lectures by OpenOffice, in case they can,t be opened by MS word and Power Ponit.

Thanks.

 

Changed also from Office 2003 to OOO 2.04 and no problems at all. Contrary, its a improvement for me because of some standard features OOO offeres (more dictionaries, etc.).

 

i don't really use office programs, but anything done in OOo can be read by MS stuff. if you use MS office programs you can save them in an open format. odf i think, or whatever open format the program can save in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument

MS have accepted a plugin for the new open standard too which should work in their new office programs
http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=1FAFNV3CGQENOQSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=187201009

some more links
http://www.openformats.org/main
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard

 

MS Word DOC file translation isn't bad and simple files tend to be perfect. SOme of the more complex documents I use at work aren't perfect however as the last version of Word I bought was Word 97 I thought it was time to upgrade and the compatability is good enough for me.

Fairy

 

Hello,
Had no problems so far.
Mrk

 

I've had a few problems converting very specifically formatted documents by Word in OO. Mainly resumes and the like. But otherwise, for normal essays and things like that, they convert fairly well.

 

thanks...sounds like if you have more than basic text on the document, you are risking a problem with the file conversion from ms word to open office. i thought it was too good to be true that there was a free word processing program that worked flawlessly with ms word documents.

 

Don't blame the free office suite, which is actually superior in many ways. Instead, blame microsoft for using a closed source document format.

Of course, if we really want to be l33t and free and all, then we should all use latex to process our documents and turn them into .dvi or .pdf files for viewing and .tex files for editing (thats what I do, and it is so much better that WYSIWYG editors once you learn the rules)

Alphalutra1

 

Correct ... But M$ has now made strides to correct that - even if the effort is a little late.

I'd choose OpenOffice over Microsoft Office (which I do have a license for [Office XP]), not only in principle but due to the standards and functionality of OpenOffice.

Ps. As I do shuttle some documents between work and home, I haven't experienced any issues to date.

 

Well, M$ is introducing the OpenXML format, but even though it is opensource, it has not been determined to be the official open source format (which is left to the open document format). Also, M$ has allowed for the creation of a plugin that will allow you to save documents in .odt, except that you have to save them first in OpenXML, then export them (you can't edit them) as a .odt file. Also, this seems to only work in office 2007, since you need to get the openxml format for it to convert. Pretty poor attempt at trying to become opensource if you ask me. But, something is better than
nothing, I guess.

Alphalutra1

 

I agree But better than M$ doing nothing, considering they really pwn the market. It's at least a step in the right direction, even though it's a baby step.