Ms Word Vs OpenOffice

[vampiredust]

Microsoft Word, after months of problems, finally gave up and died yesterday. So I downloaded Open Office which is proving more stable and I'm slowly discovering its nifty features such as being able to export documents in pdf

Plus its free, which is pretty good

 

[minsue]

Oooh, new toy! Thanks for the link.

 

[Guest]

Oooh, new toy! Thanks for the link.

Yes, thank you!

Have it bookmarked for future exploration!

 

[SimonBrooke]

Been using it for months

I'm not much of a word-processor fan at the best of times. But when you do need a word processor, OpenOffice is good; and I don't like being in thrall to the Evil Empire.

I certainly haven't had any problems with Open Office, it seems very stable.

 

[TxRad]

open office word files are directly exportable to windows word by saving them as a .doc file and the option is offered in save.

pdf is a waste of time as far as a writers word processor is concerned....

I've been using open office for several years and love it.... anything to stick it up Bill Gate's ass I'm all for..... He totally fucked up when he made works incompatible with office.....

 

[R. Richard]

Openoffice works well and is free as opposed to the extortionate price they want for Word. However, the companion spreadsheet is much slower to save than Excel or Quattropro.

 

[Seamus123]

I have both installed on my computer, and I've experienced problems with both, especially when exporting documents. I was doing some work in Open Office and I needed to export it as a .doc to be able to transfer and print on another computer, and some of the formatting on the graphics wouldn't transfer between the formats, and wouldn't let itself be adjusted in Word. However, when I try to open up any of my OpenOffice documents in Word, now, the encoding is screwed. so I keep both around.

However, for starting new projects now, I just use word. I know Open office has some nifty features, but I know where I am with word and I'd rather not take the risk of messing around between the two different programs.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

I downloaded it months ago and have been using it ever since. I spent the first 6 months or so wondering "What's the catch? How can this be free if MS Word costs so much?" I've found it at least equal to MS word in all the parts I use. Personally, I can't see why anyone would pay over $100 for MS Word when Open is available for free.

 

[i812]

I've been Microsoft free since 2003. There are currently 5,273 free software packages at GNU.

 

[Pure]

i use Word 'track changes'--editing feature-- does Open office have this? (you can make changes: additions appear in a different color, etc.)

 

[Edward Teach]

In its never ending quest to force us to buy more of its products, MS codes its newer versions of Excel, Word, etc. so that older versions of those programs cannot open files created in the newer version. Sometimes even the reverse is true -- newer versions will not open files created in the older versions.

OpenOffice, however will open files created in all versions of MS Word and Excel, old or new.

Wonder why Microsoft can't do that?

God, I hate them.

Ed

Well, I'll probably have NSA or Homeland Security reading my mail after that last comment.

 

[rgraham666]

Clever of them, isn't it?

To use their near monopoly to force you to buy their products?

And best of all, to make things even more profitable, they don't have to waste time on stuff like R&D, which would be a major cost if they had to do too much.

Isn't the modern world wonderful?

 

[Guest]

i use Word 'track changes'--editing feature-- does Open office have this? (you can make changes: additions appear in a different color, etc.)

i'd like to know this as well. i do some light editing from time to time and i really like this feature. i havent used openoffice ever so im slightly hesitant. ive also never had any trouble with word but i like to know theres something comparable out there.

 

[SimonBrooke]

i use Word 'track changes'--editing feature-- does Open office have this? (you can make changes: additions appear in a different color, etc.)

Yes. It's under Tools -> Options -> OpenOffice.org Writer -> Changes.

I've not used the feature on either Word or OpenOffice, so I don't know how good it is in comparison, but it's there.

 

[York]

I have both installed on my computer, and I've experienced problems with both, especially when exporting documents. I was doing some work in Open Office and I needed to export it as a .doc to be able to transfer and print on another computer, and some of the formatting on the graphics wouldn't transfer between the formats, and wouldn't let itself be adjusted in Word. However, when I try to open up any of my OpenOffice documents in Word, now, the encoding is screwed. so I keep both around.

Why do you have to export it to Word to print it on another computer? Is it because OO isn't on the other PC or do you need someone else to be able to edit your document? If it's the former, why not either install OO on the other PC, or export to PDF or RTF to print from the other PC. If it's the latter then again RTF might be a good export option. (Having said that, Word is not great at RTF. )

Another thing you might be able to try is to print to a file and copy that file to the other PC. You might then be able to copy that file to your printer. You certainly used to be able to do that under DOS, so you might be able to either drag it or open a command line window up to try it.

However, for starting new projects now, I just use word. I know Open office has some nifty features, but I know where I am with word and I'd rather not take the risk of messing around between the two different programs.

It might be worth you sussing it though because Word 2007 is coming: it's going to be very expensive and have a new file format I am told, so you'll potentially have lots of formatting issues anyway.