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OpenOffice.org / Open Office - Fragbait - 05-16-2006
Hi,
Title says it all. I'm looking especially at discrepancies of formats, structure when saving into Microsoft Office formats.
Is Open Office of any use if I had to create documents and presentations with it - say for university and/or for work - and wanted others (particularly my professor / boss, using MS Office) to be able to read it in perfect quality (= without flaws and errors)?
Thanks in advance.
Greetings, Fragbait
OpenOffice.org / Open Office - Doc - 05-16-2006
Fragbait,May 16 2006, 08:22 AM Wrote:Hi,
Title says it all. I'm looking especially at discrepancies of formats, structure when saving into Microsoft Office formats.
Is Open Office of any use if I had to create documents and presentations with it - say for university and/or for work - and wanted others (particularly my professor / boss, using MS Office) to be able to read it in perfect quality (= without flaws and errors)?
Thanks in advance.
Greetings, Fragbait
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I have used the Linux version and found it to be just about the best office software I personally have ever used. It has M$ beat hands down, and I don't remember specifics, but it will open just about any file ever. As I seem to recall there are also pluggin type things to allow it to open some special files. As far as I know, it will save in to .doc files and M$ office standard files just fine. You can even preserve the formatting and layout. I know I have sent some folks some spreadsheets made in OO and they were able to open them just fine in M$, but M$ is missing a few features that OO has, so if you use those features, nobody will know.
Most of the time I just use Text Edit, but I am old fashioned like that. OO is very nice though.
OpenOffice.org / Open Office - vor_lord - 05-16-2006
Fragbait,May 16 2006, 06:22 AM Wrote:I'm looking especially at discrepancies of formats, structure when saving into Microsoft Office formats.
Is Open Office of any use if I had to create documents and presentations with it - say for university and/or for work - and wanted others (particularly my professor / boss, using MS Office) to be able to read it in perfect quality (= without flaws and errors)?
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You will not get perfect translation in either direction. It's pretty good these days but if you are expecting perfect translation you are bound to be disappointed.
OpenOffice.org / Open Office - Doc - 05-16-2006
vor_lord,May 16 2006, 09:24 AM Wrote:You will not get perfect translation in either direction. It's pretty good these days but if you are expecting perfect translation you are bound to be disappointed.
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I find that saving something in to a rich text format helps. Especially if you check all the options to preserve spacing, width, etc.
I find that .doc documents are absolutely terrible to deal with in general. I have seen, with my own eyes, .doc documents change dramatically from machine to machine, just on windows boxes. Make it on one box, send it to another, and it comes out quite a bit different.
I have to deal with dozens of different documents a day, many reports, spreadsheets, financial reports, progress reports, staff entries, etc. I have yet to find a perfect solution. What I have found though is that there are a million ways to skin a cat. If you have to work with them, there are plenty of work arounds.
Text Edit for the Mac can open .doc files after a bit of tinkering. It does pretty damn good all things considered.
OpenOffice.org / Open Office - roguebanshee - 05-16-2006
Doc,May 16 2006, 05:48 PM Wrote:I have to deal with dozens of different documents a day, many reports, spreadsheets, financial reports, progress reports, staff entries, etc. I have yet to find a perfect solution.If it only needs to be read then saving as a pdf file works wonders.
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![[Image: oopdf0iu.jpg]](http://img465.imageshack.us/img465/3816/oopdf0iu.jpg)
OpenOffice.org / Open Office - Doc - 05-16-2006
roguebanshee,May 16 2006, 11:34 AM Wrote:If it only needs to be read then saving as a pdf file works wonders.
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Damn, I completely forgot to mention that. Thanks. I do save quite a few things as portable document formats.
Not everything can be done that way though. A real pain in the ass.
OSX uses Quartz, which is all about the PDF. PDF based rendering is so nice. I wish more systems would adopt this format. It's so... Elegant.
OpenOffice.org / Open Office - kandrathe - 05-17-2006
Fragbait,May 16 2006, 08:22 AM Wrote:Hi,You might also want to consider an inexpensive Star Office since it is based on open office, with Sun's revisions and quality control.
Title says it all. I'm looking especially at discrepancies of formats, structure when saving into Microsoft Office formats.
Is Open Office of any use if I had to create documents and presentations with it - say for university and/or for work - and wanted others (particularly my professor / boss, using MS Office) to be able to read it in perfect quality (= without flaws and errors)?
Thanks in advance.
Greetings, Fragbait
[right][snapback]110002[/snapback][/right]
OpenOffice.org / Open Office - Doc - 05-17-2006
kandrathe,May 16 2006, 08:16 PM Wrote:You might also want to consider an inexpensive Star Office since it is based on open office, with Sun's revisions and quality control.
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Is that any good? I could never get the damn thing to install properly with Yellow Dog Linux.
OpenOffice.org / Open Office - yangman - 05-17-2006
roguebanshee,May 16 2006, 09:34 AM Wrote:If it only needs to be read then saving as a pdf file works wonders.
Ditto that.
Personally, I avoid word processors as much as possible, often only using OpenOffice to export class notes to PDF format.
When I do need to write a paper, I use LyX or straight LaTeX when LyX isn't appropriate. The last time I had to actually wordprosess in OpenOffice was for a linguistics class where I had to use IPA symbols heavily, and did not want to bother with LaTeX as LyX currently does not support unicode.
And, yes, I am a GNU/Linux user.
OpenOffice.org / Open Office - Doc - 05-17-2006
YZilla,May 16 2006, 08:34 PM Wrote:Ditto that.
Personally, I avoid word processors as much as possible, often only using OpenOffice to export class notes to PDF format.
When I do need to write a paper, I use LyX or straight LaTeX when LyX isn't appropriate. The last time I had to actually wordprosess in OpenOffice was for a linguistics class where I had to use IPA symbols heavily, and did not want to bother with LaTeX as LyX currently does not support unicode.
And, yes, I am a GNU/Linux user.
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Any gnus is good gnus.
OpenOffice.org / Open Office - Fragbait - 05-17-2006
Thanks guys.
- Fragbait