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General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Halo on June 20, 2008, 04:58:28 PM

Title: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: Halo on June 20, 2008, 04:58:28 PM
OpenOffice.org.  Anybody using this?  Do you prefer it to Microsoft Office and/or Microsoft Works?  Can you work seamlessly between all three applications or will some not function with the competitor? 

I used to use MS Office and now use MS Works.  Both okay, maybe not always as intuitive as I might prefer.  Some other guys have praised OpenOffice, so I downloaded and installed it yesterday.  Haven't started exercising it yet.  Thought I had better seek reactions from this illustrious forum before experimenting with another system when the one I use ain't broke, so to speak. 

Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: Stixx on June 20, 2008, 05:41:01 PM
Personally I like MS better than open office. In 95 I moved from a typewriter to a computer for writing and was
using Word Perfect which I became quite familiar with. Recently I've had to transition to MS word. I tried both
open office and MS word and for me found Word to be more intuitive. So if it ain't broke, why fix it?
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: DREDIOCK on June 20, 2008, 06:18:02 PM
I like Open Office.
Works fine for what I use it for.
And its a hell of alot cheaper then the overpriced MS version.

My son uses Open Office for college as do most of his friends.
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: JB88 on June 20, 2008, 06:57:01 PM
i prefer word. but mostly because i like the page centered on the screen while i am typing.

so far as i have found, open office always left justifies.  which makes me nuts.

other than that, it's a great program and you can create pdfs with it.  which is a plus.

 :)

Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: Halo46 on June 20, 2008, 07:04:59 PM
I have open office, but only because I can't afford a new copy of MS Office. It is not bad, but...
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: Lusche on June 20, 2008, 07:18:17 PM
When I set up my new computer a few months ago, I didn't even bother installing MS Office again. Only using OO right now.
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: Rolex on June 20, 2008, 08:05:20 PM
I've used it for years. I had more problems with MS Office when it came to opening a file or converting for different versions of MS Office, than I had between OO and MS Office. One nice feature is that you can convert directly to .pdf from within OO. Maybe you can do that now in MS Word, but I'm not sure. Try it.
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: JB88 on June 20, 2008, 08:14:05 PM
I've used it for years. I had more problems with MS Office when it came to opening a file or converting for different versions of MS Office, than I had between OO and MS Office. One nice feature is that you can convert directly to .pdf from within OO. Maybe you can do that now in MS Word, but I'm not sure. Try it.

you can save as pdf in word 2007...but i'm not sure if it was available in earlier versions.  don't think it was.
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: ZetaNine on June 20, 2008, 09:48:30 PM
Can you work seamlessly between all three applications or will some not function with the competitor? 



this is what I always wanted to know. 
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: JB88 on June 20, 2008, 09:54:42 PM
you can open and save .doc files in OO, if i'm not mistaken.  not sure about works files.  hate works so i've never checked.

(shrug)
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: DREDIOCK on June 20, 2008, 10:57:34 PM
Ok I just had to use both MS Word and Open Office

Open ofice will open all documents from word, Works, and office
Whereas I had problems opening a Word document from one computer on another computer using a different version of word.
I ended up having to use open office  to view the file I created on another computer using word.

I personally find OO easier to deal with. But its probably a matter of what your used to.

why dont you just DL Open Office and give it a spin.
The price is certainly right (Free)

http://www.openoffice.org/
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: DREDIOCK on June 20, 2008, 11:01:27 PM
"OpenOffice.org 2 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages"
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: Charon on June 21, 2008, 12:23:00 AM
I like MS Office better, but not $300 better.

Charon
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: Reschke on June 21, 2008, 12:38:45 AM
I use MS Office at work and Open Office at home...They both work equally well for me and the only reason I use OO at home is because it is FREE!
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: gunnss on June 21, 2008, 01:14:52 AM
One thing about open office, it works with Ubuntu.  It also swallows my Dragon speak voice to type program with great facility.  Which is really nice, it takes my typing from the two finger 20 words a minute level up to the 150 word a minute level.  This helps a bunch when I'm trying to get a story or article down.  It also is nice for answering e-mail, especially since bifocals irritate me. :confused:
regards,
Kevin
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: OOZ662 on June 21, 2008, 01:55:44 AM
Open Office will do EVERYTHING (and more in some cases) that MS Office will do, but it can be somewhat harder to do (like an icon not in the same place or the function named differently). That's what happens in open source.
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: Gunslinger on July 03, 2008, 02:44:34 PM
so I took the plunge.  I DLed Open Office and have to say it is really simular to office 2000.  Works just like the MS program but faster.  They upgraded our computers at work to 2007 and ALL THE FREAKIN BUTTONS MOVED!  I can't stand it.  This is just fine and it's free.  I've even considered sending a few pay pal dollars there way.  Highly recomended vs spending the money for microcrap.
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: Fulmar on July 03, 2008, 02:52:25 PM
you can save as pdf in word 2007...but i'm not sure if it was available in earlier versions.  don't think it was.

You can, you just need to have Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader), the $250+ kind.
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: indy007 on July 03, 2008, 02:56:10 PM
I'm stuck on MS Office for the forseeable future. I can't complain at all. It cut what's an 8 hour process into 10 minutes once I coded all of the automation. Now I've got this neat system that handles all of my offers, orders, billing, etc, etc all virtually hands free.

It didn't take long to teach myself the code I needed to know to do what I want. Now I just check my email, copy over new lists into the directory, open my Access DB, and click 1 button. It matches inventories, creates nice excel spreadsheets with everything relevant, mails them out, marks the transaction logs, etc, etc.

I managed all of that without any computer classes since highschool... so I can't complain about MS Office at all, let alone contemplate switching.



and you've been able to save as PDF files for a long time, on pretty much any version of MS Office. There's plenty of little plugins that will do it for you. Hell, my lexmark printer install disk came with one that works perfectly.
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: straffo on July 03, 2008, 03:13:03 PM
you can open and save .doc files in OO, if i'm not mistaken.  not sure about works files.  hate works so i've never checked.

(shrug)

usually OO can open .doc word can't open without crashing !
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: ROX on July 03, 2008, 04:36:26 PM
OO can open most documents, spreadsheets, and tables & queries that Office can.

If you don't mind the version with slightly fewer bells and whistles you will be quite happy.  The folks who did OO bright, innovative, and showed a slightly stripped down model would fill most people's needs.  It also requires less of a learning curve than Office.

Sadly, I have to go with Access & Excel as some of the databases and queries I maintain are pretty complicated.  That, and my clients usually need their stuff done in them.. Thank goodness for delimited text files...usually fairly quickly downloadable.




ROX
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: DYNAMITE on July 03, 2008, 08:26:33 PM
I've got MS office and Open office... both are great.  But for the price OO cannot be beat.  I find it to be just as capable as MSO.  As a matter of fact, I don't imagine I'll be buying MSO ever again.
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: Nilsen on July 04, 2008, 02:07:35 AM
I have used open office for work and personal use for a few years now. Dont see the need to pay lots of money to MS when Open Office does it just as good for free. Use it both on my mac and wintels. I do miss Outlook tho, and hope they will soon start to sell Outlook only as they promised not too long ago.
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: MrRiplEy[H] on July 04, 2008, 02:55:38 AM
I have used open office for work and personal use for a few years now. Dont see the need to pay lots of money to MS when Open Office does it just as good for free. Use it both on my mac and wintels. I do miss Outlook tho, and hope they will soon start to sell Outlook only as they promised not too long ago.

Thunderbird is much better than outlook anyway.
Title: Re: OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works
Post by: Nilsen on July 04, 2008, 03:01:51 AM
Thunderbird is much better than outlook anyway.

No because it cant sync appointments and contacts with my smartphone like the calendar in Outlook can.