OpenOffice???

bridgetown1

One Simple Question:

Is it any good?

I need Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access for my work. Instead of paying good money to Microsoft I am considering OpenOffice.

So, is it any good???

Thanks in advance!!!:)

Johnboy1951

Yes

as is Libre Office

Setun

Many linux distros come with Libre Office as standard, and having used it in an office environment I can confirm that it's very good. I haven't used Open Office in a long time but I imagine they are very similar.

Capt'n Midnight

Try before you buy
open templates and files and emails you already have

that's the lovely thing about open source

Tip: If you try the portable version of libreoffice you don't even need to install it

For creating your own documents , perfectly ok

For using someone else's documents , usually ok
unless they have go mad on the formatting or have complicated macros it's usually OK


There is no replacement for Access yet - Base is very different

Impress is great if you are using a projector

Draw is like Visio Lite - different file formats but a lot cheaper than visio
Publisher doesn't share files with anything else - perhaps use Inkscape instead ?


if you need to give docs to other people then you can generate pdf's

you can also install microsoft word / excel / powerpoint viewers to check stuff you are sending to others



at the end of the day if you need 100% compatability for all features with other microsoft office users then you have to buy the same version of office they are using

oscarBravo

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Publisher doesn't share files with anything else - perhaps use Inkscape instead ?

I would have said Scribus.

bridgetown1

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

at the end of the day if you need 100% compatability for all features with other microsoft office users then you have to buy the same version of office they are using

That is the real Bollox about it. There are so many different versions of Office going around, 97 (anybody still using?), 2000, XP, 07, 10 and I am told there is a 13 coming out, and compatability between some versions is a touch dodgey!

croo

From MS Office 2010 there is a prompt to use Open XML or ODF as the default file format, so I guess *if* people start choosing the ODF option then we *might* finally start to address that issue!