Open Office Users???

[DMcFadden]

I love underdogs. Our car is a Hyundai and in addition to Libronix my computer is full of thousands of e-Sword and theWord mods (mostly free). So, in my own "railing against the machine" of Microsoft's hegemony, I am trying Oracle's free open source Open Office 3.

Do any of you use Open Office 3? How is it working for you? What features to you use? Like? Find difficult? What add-ons have you found helpful?

 

[Wayne]

I switched to a Linux OS some time back and chose the Ubuntu distribution, which at the time came packaged with Open Office.
Now LibreOffice is part of the setup when you upgrade Ubuntu.

There were some differences between Open Office and Microsoft Office--mostly some things that I couldn't do, but all in all it worked well enough.
The free aspect helps.

 

[NaphtaliPress]

I prefer Word, particularly in a group and professional/project setting where there are headaches if there's a mix of usage. That's my experience as far as receiving documents authored/edited on each (not to mention cross platform issues).

 

[jogri17]

Open office is nolonger as good as it once was. LibreOffice is the way to go now for true Linux users.

 

[Rich Koster]

I use OO. The only problem I have is when I attempt to view a Powerpoint presentation/slideshow. It doesn't advance frames, I have to do it manually. It handles Excel Docs with no problem. Just remember to save it to the proper format if you are sending them to someone who uses Windows.

 

[VictorBravo]

For most any sort of word processing, OO is fine. I first used it in around 2000, before that I was familiar with Star Office. I had been using Word Perfect products since the 80s and didn't want to fork out for the MS products.

Plus, the Open Office version from the early 2000s even printed to pdf, which was a new and wonderful thing for a word processor to do in those days (before 2001, pdf specifications were secret).

It is remarkable what power you can find in free systems these days.

Having said all that, professionally I use MS Office 2007. I've proven myself as someone fond of and skilled at tinkering, but when it comes down to cranking out a complex document with a table of authorities, or collaborating with others under deadline, I'm going for stability and familiarity.

I know, in the past, that MS could not claim that, but in those days OO was even less stable than MS. For complex docs, the same is true now, in my experience.

 

[ericfromcowtown]

I have used Open Office for quite some time and generally like it.

I frequently work in a document at home, save it as a .doc file, and then work on it over my lunch hour in MS Word. For the most part this works okay, although there are the odd formatting details that do not translate well between Open Office and Word. For instance, I'll place page numbers in a .doc file within Word, open that same .doc file in Open Office, and discover that the page numbers are awol. Small anoyances for being free from Redmond, I suppose.

 

[py3ak]

I wish I could say that Open Office was as versatile and reliable as MS Office - but it isn't. When I was able to acquire a version of MS Office for $10 I took that opportunity and haven't looked back.

 

[Scottish Lass]

Most of my students send assignments to me as attachments. I'm two or three versions of Word behind (and refuse to spend money on it), and I agree that there are a few formatting quirks when switching between the two, which can be problematic when part of the point of the assignment is to learn proper formatting (research papers, etc.). Our school uses Excel to help us track tuition (parents pay us directly), and it seems to work well there.

The bottom line is that the less converting you need, the better OO is.

 

[Covenant Joel]

Open Office is fine for general word processing, but when I tried to use it to format papers for my RTS classes, it was the world's worst nightmare. Page numbers, footnotes, etc., all either didn't work right or took a million years to set up compared to MS Word.

 

[DMcFadden]

Ouch!

I suspect that I will migrate back to MS. However, it has been able to handle some things in Powerpoint (e.g., some video files) easier than MS.

 

[N. Eshelman]

I have the Mac version which is called Neo Office but it crashes a lot. There is an update, but when I go to the website to update it, it asks for a donation. Neo Office is not FREE, but is for a minimum $10 purchase. Pages (Mac's version of Word) is only $14!

 

[ClayPot]

Most of my students send assignments to me as attachments. I'm two or three versions of Word behind (and refuse to spend money on it), and I agree that there are a few formatting quirks when switching between the two, which can be problematic when part of the point of the assignment is to learn proper formatting (research papers, etc.). Our school uses Excel to help us track tuition (parents pay us directly), and it seems to work well there.

The bottom line is that the less converting you need, the better OO is.

I have a similar problem with students sending me Word files. Sometimes if they are working on a PC, I have trouble opening the file with proper formatting since I work on a Mac. Make them send the files in .pdf format. For Windows, PDFCreator is a free program that works great. There won't be any compatibility problems if they send it to you in a pdf.