OpenOffice

Lonestar · Post by **Lonestar** » 2005-10-27 02:52pm

Anyone try this program? I have heard it's "better" than MS Office.

www.openoffice.org

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-10-27 02:56pm

I use it myself. Rather nice program with exactly the same functionality as MS Office, but it's free.

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2005-10-27 03:04pm

A word of warning though, it uses more ram both per application and for each additional window.
Still it's very good and free.

Dominus Atheos · Post by **Dominus Atheos** » 2005-10-27 03:09pm

I have found that the spelling and grammar checker in the word processing are inferior to microsoft word.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2005-10-27 03:22pm

If you use it purely as a, simple, word processor OpenOffice might be on par with MS Word.

But it sure as hell isnt upto the entire MS Office suite.

Dangermouse · Post by **Dangermouse** » 2005-10-27 03:30pm

I use OpenOffice. My two complaints:

1) It sometimes has formatting issues after you save and reopen a document. I have noticed, especially when using forms, that OpenOffice will introduce strange font size changes, remove lines and sections in forms, or other weird things.

2) The powerpoint application with OpenOffice is not as good as the Microsoft version.

Its very useful and free, but not as good as Office.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2005-10-27 03:55pm

I tried OpenOffice (2.0 beta) for a few days. I didn't like it. The formatting isn't up to par with MS Office, and the interface felt lacking. The its PowerPoint counterpoint wasn't as good-looking or flexible as MS PP. I didn't play with Numbers. IMO, Office 2003 kicks the shit out of OpenOffice.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2005-10-27 03:58pm

By any chance, when you're having all these strange formatting problems, are you saving to MS Word files? It's pretty well-known that OpenOffice's Word filters aren't completely up to par. But if you save in the OpenOffice format, you won't have a single formatting issue.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2005-10-27 04:00pm

Crayz9000 wrote:By any chance, when you're having all these strange formatting problems, are you saving to MS Word files? It's pretty well-known that OpenOffice's Word filters aren't completely up to par. But if you save in the OpenOffice format, you won't have a single formatting issue.

I don't know about anybody else, but I tried to modify a file I imported from Word, AND making a new file to look like one I did in Word. It didn't work out so well either way.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-10-27 04:02pm

I like it, I have no need for 99% of Office features, it works fine for me and I never use Powerpoint.

My complaint is hebrew support, or more generally, all non stock language support. Which is funny coming from that software.

I use it, I'm happy with it. If one day I shall actully have to use Office, I'll consider buying it.

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-10-27 08:00pm

I use it - it has a few niggling issues (not as intuitive as MS) and I've had some stability problems when dealing with 1mb+ documents, but overall its nice.

JediToren · Post by **JediToren** » 2005-10-27 08:21pm

I've been using it exclusively since I switched to Linux a year and a half ago. OOWriter is awesome, easy to use, and has all of the features I ever used in MS Word. As far as formatting goes, I don't know what you guys are talking about, as I have found it has everything I ever used in MS Word, plus a lot more. But then again, the last version of MS Office I used was Office 2000.
I've written a number of short screenplays for film school, plenty of papers and reports, plus convention schedules (which can actually be exported to usable HTML, unlike Word which needs lots of clean up). I've also created lots of various fliers for use at conventions and other events.
I did all of those things in MS Word before and OOWriter behaves the same way so there was no learning curve whatsoever.
My only complaint about OOWriter is the lack of an equivelent of any drawing features, as I occasionally used that feature in Word (usually to create computer versions of script supervisor notes for film school).

I've never had any problems reading or writing to Word files, but the newest files I've had to deal with are 2000, not XP. Microsoft's office file formats are secret, undocumented, and change with each new version in order to thwart competing office software. OpenOffice, like all competing office suites, must reverse engineer the formats in order to add that functionality to their software.

I've always passed around formatted text documents in RTF format since I was in high school. Many people I know don't use or have access to MS Office, so sending it in RTF format is just common sense, especially when you are sending in an assignment or paper to an instructor.

OOImpress (the PowerPoint) is fine for what I use it for. I just used PowerPoint for creating slide shows for use at conventions, and it has been easy to do this in Impress, just as it was in PowerPoint. I usually save copies of the presentation in MS PowerPoint format, and have no trouble opening the file in PowerPoint.

I've only briefly used OOCalc (the Excel clone) but the interface is more or less identical to Excel and everything I did with Excel (which wasn't much) I can do with OOCalc. No trouble dealing with MS XLS files.

I've never used OODraw or OOMath, nor any MS Office equivelents of those apps (if there are any).

BloodAngel · Post by **BloodAngel** » 2005-10-27 09:00pm

Back a long time ago, OpenOffice mysteriously wiped out one of my documents. Needless to say, I was angered greatly. Then I upgraded, and all was good from then on, but my document remains forever lost.

Also, its filesizes are infinitely shorter than standard MSWord format, so that's another reason to use it.

Dangermouse · Post by **Dangermouse** » 2005-10-27 09:06pm

Crayz9000 wrote:By any chance, when you're having all these strange formatting problems, are you saving to MS Word files? It's pretty well-known that OpenOffice's Word filters aren't completely up to par. But if you save in the OpenOffice format, you won't have a single formatting issue.

That was probably it then. I was saving my work to .doc files for emailing to colleagues.

sketerpot · Post by **sketerpot** » 2005-10-27 09:31pm

OpenOffice has a formula editor which lets me put math into my documents. I use it all the time (when LaTeX is overkill). That alone makes up for most of its faults as far as I'm concerned.

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-10-27 10:20pm

See the current venting thread p2 for my rant.

My file (rebuilt) is currently around 20mb, so its understandable that the program had a hissy fit.

Edward Yee · Post by **Edward Yee** » 2005-10-27 11:07pm

Yay, quite a few people can see past the easy "bash Microsoft because anything is sup3rior!" veneer. Thanks for being cool.

Another complaint is that it by default selects the Open Office format .sxw, and this is a complaint because I use MS Word on the other computer. If I can set it to save text documents to .doc by default, this would not be a problem.

Oh, and LONG load time on my laptop, versus a very short load time for MS Word on my desktop.

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-10-27 11:20pm

ACtually the newer version is .odt, and the 2.0beta has a LOT of save fixes and options.

Edward Yee · Post by **Edward Yee** » 2005-10-28 01:16am

Still not .doc

But do any of these new options set the default save format?

Thanks for telling me; I'm using the stable version v1.1.4.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2005-10-28 01:33am

If you guys need to just e-mail a file to your colleagues and don't need them to be able to revise it (which sometimes they shouldn't anyway) then there's a direct export to PDF option you can use. It will preserve all formatting for them, and they can print it etc.

As for setting the default save option, while I personally don't recommend it (due to the above-mentioned import/export formatting issues), you can find it under Tools > Options > Load/Save > General. Click under "Always save as" and select Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (scroll up).

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2005-10-28 05:05am

OpenOffice also requires vastly more CPU & memory todo the equivalent thing in MS Office.

We are talking about the difference of a few seconds for MS office and minutes for OpenOffice on the same hardware for some operations

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2005-10-28 07:17am

After I had an unfortunate run-in with its predecessor StarOffice 5, I never ever touched it again. Using MS Office is ways safer for my nerves...

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2005-10-28 04:06pm

ggs wrote:OpenOffice also requires vastly more CPU & memory todo the equivalent thing in MS Office.

We are talking about the difference of a few seconds for MS office and minutes for OpenOffice on the same hardware for some operations

Hm? Which ones?

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2005-10-28 07:49pm

I don't have any problems with StarOffice, but I don't remember what version it is. Actually, that's the program I use to make gif files.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-10-28 07:53pm

Regarding memory usage, I don't notice that much RAM usage from opening large files in OpenOffice Writer(I rarely use the rest), or maybe I'm just used to it.