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| Thread ID: 37260 | 2003-09-02 03:15:00 | Wanting feedback on Openoffice please. | John Grieve (367) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 172424 | 2003-09-02 03:15:00 | I am building a PC for a friend and she has asked me if I can install Office . Problem is Office costs a fortune (money she and I both lack) so I am considering installing OpenOffice 1 . 1 off the latest PCWorld magazine disc . My friend writes for local papers and other freelance type writing and she has been told she needs both . doc and excel capable software . I would like some input on this please . Will openoffice handle both types of documents alright? Will the companies who are considering her stuff be able to easily view documents she creates in Openoffice? Are there any known problems with Openoffice I and her should be aware of? She is pretty much a newbie about PC problems so is Openoffice a good choice for a newbie (she has experience with MS office products) . Thanks for any input . By the way I know nothing about Office type software as I use notepad and Wordpad only and have never installed any Office type products to any of my PCs . And yes I did search this site and read all the found posts about openoffice but there was not a lot of info in the posts . |
John Grieve (367) | ||
| 172425 | 2003-09-02 03:22:00 | Oh and by the way, I am installing to Win 2000. | John Grieve (367) | ||
| 172426 | 2003-09-02 03:27:00 | John, Not sure if this site will help or hinder but ... OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) Babe. |
Babe Ruth (416) | ||
| 172427 | 2003-09-02 04:03:00 | I use Star Office 6 (for runner to Open Office) on my home PC and, apart from some commands that are different from those in Word/Excel, I have no major problems. I haven't been able yet to set up the rule that allows emailing of documents, and I have no spellcheck on Outlook (that requires an MS program like Word or Works). The help file is quite user unfriendly and so fare I have been unable to find an instruction book in NZ. Chris |
Chris Randal (521) | ||
| 172428 | 2003-09-02 04:43:00 | only problem i have seen (with ver 1.0) was some excel files won't display properly. they may have fixed by now. i would suggest try it and see. |
tweak'e (174) | ||
| 172429 | 2003-09-02 07:27:00 | I use OO for sharing with MS Office users and it generally works well. Most documents work fine. But complex documents can get a little munted or loose some formatting. The only document I've had trouble with was a word doc that had made heavy use of "track changes". OO would open it, but crashed when I tried to make certain changes. I ended up having to throw away the change history. To be fair, it also crashed word97 and had issues with word2000. |
bmason (508) | ||
| 172430 | 2003-09-02 09:31:00 | >>My friend writes for local papers and other freelance type writing and she has been told she needs both .doc and excel capable software. Its interesting that they haven't specified a specific version of .doc and .xls files. Maybe they appreciate that Microsoft Office can be expensive for people to use on a casual basis and therefore will allow office compatible software (such as OpenOffice). For general word processing/spreadsheet duties, OpenOffice should be fine. If she was a power user than it may be better to purchase Office. Certainly it costs nothing to load OpenOffice on for her and let her try it. If she has some friends with Office 2000, then maybe she could create some documents that she it likely to be submitting and see if they can read them with Office 2000 (which they should). Of course if she is writing "professionally" then Office would be an expense but I certainly recommend OpenOffice as a starting point. |
Dolby Digital (160) | ||
| 172431 | 2003-09-02 12:54:00 | Dont Use the latest version of OpenOffice from their Website.. 1.3 RC i think... its buggy cos it keeps crashing at rrandom times.. stick to version1.1 |
bob_doe_nz (92) | ||
| 172432 | 2003-09-02 22:59:00 | I have been using Open Office professionally - I'm a fulltime writer and editor - for a year or so, and have never had any compatibility problems . Tracking changes works well, too . The new version on the cover disk is fine for all purposes (except possibly for corporate users), so I recommend you give it a go . There is a NZ dictionary available for download at www . openoffice . org . Apart from being free, Open Office has the advantage of creating smaller files than Word - just compare the same text saved in the two formats . I haven't used the spreadsheet much but it opened and displayed Excel files without any trouble . |
stratters (2587) | ||
| 172433 | 2003-09-03 01:42:00 | The compatibility propblems are mostly with the Microsoft "features". Since no-one with any sense would use them, no problem. :D It's curious that they want .doc files ... it used to be that editors didn't want "nicely formatted" copy ... just plain text ... because they do their own formatting to their own house style. (Apart from MS's lovely executable macro viruses included in files. :D) There are books around ... the Christchurch Public Library has a couple. |
Graham L (2) | ||
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