OpenOffice free software

[caldera]

Anybody familiar with it?  I want to make a spreadsheet but don't want to buy Excel.

[Rolex]

Works fine. You can make, save, open and share the same files as Microsoft Office.

[grizz441]

It works well.  It's almost identical in every facet, i.e. statistical functions, spreadsheet being user friendly.  Programming cells is the same.  The graphs are a little bit different but are easily figured out.  Open office also has a very good online help data base.

[caldera]

Wow that was fast.     Thanks.

[allaire]

It works well.  It's almost identical in every facet, i.e. statistical functions, spreadsheet being user friendly.  Programming cells is the same.  The graphs are a little bit different but are easily figured out.  Open office also has a very good online help data base.

Not only that but if you act now it can be yours for the low, low price of free.

[gunnss]

Grin,
I use it for writing in the pro market. Another feature is that it has a Linux version that operates the same (mostly) and does not need a windows OS to run.
Regards,
Kevin

[canacka]

What's great about it is it is compatible with MS Office documents.  You can open them, and they can open yours! 

[Shuffler]

I use open office all the time. I run thunderbird for my mail.
I use a PDF plugin to open and edit PDFs too.

It works excellently.

[eagl]

I used to use openoffice, until the USAF purchased a home use program license from Microsoft.  Now I get to buy one copy of office ultimate (or whatever the business version happens to be called now) for $20 whenever the version changes.

If I didn't have that option, you bet I'd be using openoffice.

[BoilerDown]

I had problem with it screwing up Java for everything else that runs on Java.  Before I bothered to figure out why that happened I went back to school and just bought a student copy of MS Office.  So they may have fixed it by now.  But it was within the last two years that I had that problem.

[jimson]

OO is great, surprised Microsoft hasn't successfully shut em down.

[Shuffler]

OO is great, surprised Microsoft hasn't successfully shut em down.

If they were making money on it I believe there would then be an issue.

[jimson]

I would think they would take issue over a free product that is a compatible alternative to their expensive product.

[DYNAMITE]

OpenOffice is a great software package.   I think Microsoft leaves them alone because hardly anyone uses it.  Yes, it's true it does everything MS office does, but for some reason most people will always want the name brand and not even give the alternative a try.

But I guess that is good for those of us that are willing to give it try. 

[grizz441]

There does seem to be some compatibility issues as far as graphs go.  If I save my oo spreadsheet to a .xls and try to open it with excel on a different machine, my plots may get messed up.  The spreadsheets are completely comvertible though.