Open Office questions!

[Shroom Man 777]

When I type, midway through typing a word the program attempts to finish the word for me. This is annoying, how do I disable it?

[Executor32]

Buy a cheap copy of MS Office '07? I hear it's designed with the interests of more people than fatty nerds in mind.

Or you could go to Tools->AutoCorrect Options, click the Word Completion tab, and uncheck 'Enable word completion', but then you'd still be using OO.o and thus be a terrible person.

[AMT]

Buy a cheap copy of MS Office '07? I hear it's designed with the interests of more people than fatty nerds in mind.

Or you could go to Tools->AutoCorrect Options, click the Word Completion tab, and uncheck 'Enable word completion', but then you'd still be using OO.o and thus be a terrible person.

And what's wrong with a program that's free and does what you need it to?

[Phantasee]

Buy a cheap copy of MS Office '07? I hear it's designed with the interests of more people than fatty nerds in mind.

Or you could go to Tools->AutoCorrect Options, click the Word Completion tab, and uncheck 'Enable word completion', but then you'd still be using OO.o and thus be a terrible person.

And what's wrong with a program that's free and does what you need it to?

Who needs their word processor to complete their words for them? And Office 07 Student Edition is dirt cheap for anyone in school.

[Thanas]

Who needs their word processor to complete their words for them? And Office 07 Student Edition is dirt cheap for anyone in school.

Which not all people are.

[Phantasee]

Who needs their word processor to complete their words for them? And Office 07 Student Edition is dirt cheap for anyone in school.

Which not all people are.

I understand Shroom might still be? Post-secondary institutions usually offer the student discounts even post-graduation, for a little while, AFAIK.

[Stofsk]

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter how cheap as chips Office 07 is, OpenOffice is free. No frills, but it does its job adequately.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Except it sucks.

[weemadando]

Yeah. It sucks that a free product that is continuously updated doesn't have the same high-end functionality as a several hundred dollar one.

Oh wait - no...

[JointStrikeFighter]

It sucks that it has horrible UI, is slow as shit, a system hog and most importantly doesn't match industry, business or academic fucking standards without shitloads of fucking around.

[weemadando]

The optimisation is shit - I remember losing work several times when it would crap it's pants because it couldn't handle a 100+ page document wiht many embedded tables and images, however that was 5 years ago and on a slow, old, PC.

As for UI until the ribbon of Office 07 (which many hate), I felt that OO had the better UI.

[MKSheppard]

It sucks that it has horrible UI

Acutally; I like it's UI better than the infamous ribbon UI which ruined WordPad.

is slow as shit

Strange; for me it loads documents in an acceptable amount of time. It's only when
.ods files approach 1 MB that it becomes slow loading on my system.

a system hog

When the aforementioned 1 MB .ods file is loaded up; Open Office Calc's memory useage is about 83~ MB -- I don't know the comparable figures for Excel, however. Can someone help me out here? I can email the CSV file I use to someone who has Excel for a comparison.

and most importantly doesn't match industry, business or academic fucking standards without shitloads of fucking around.

You will of course provide some examples?

I've always been able to open and play around with MS Office formats in OO -- at least with an acceptable level, considering the price: $0.00

[Stark]

Acutally; I like it's UI better than the infamous ribbon UI which ruined WordPad.

That you're comparing OO to wordpad is pretty funny, but since the ribbon UI of 2007 is widely accepted as better by all kinds of users makes it funnier. I far prefer it, but then I can learn new things. The ribbon is a much needed overhaul that makes it far simpler to work with different sets of functionality (especially in Excel, working with scientific/finanical statistical analysis).

Strange; for me it loads documents in an acceptable amount of time. It's only when
.ods files approach 1 MB that it becomes slow loading on my system.

Try loading a powerpoint. Oops, it took five minutes to convert to the OO format of fail.

When the aforementioned 1 MB .ods file is loaded up; Open Office Calc's memory useage is about 83~ MB -- I don't know the comparable figures for Excel, however. Can someone help me out here? I can email the CSV file I use to someone who has Excel for a comparison.

Do you think a 1mb text file is representative of anything? The simplest presentation or client document produced in my office is 4mb, and OO would destroy the formating as soon as open it.

aYou will of course provide some examples?

I've always been able to open and play around with MS Office formats in OO -- at least with an acceptable level, considering the price: $0.00

Turns out people are prepared to pay money to be able to interact with business or academic organisations. I can't even view my lecture notes or work with presentations properly in OO, and saving a document instantly kills all the Office-specific formatting.

Using OO costs anyone who works with Office files money. People who cry 'wah free' don't understand how much working with information correctly IS money. OO constantly tweaks silliness and goes through serious revisions that address issues that AREN'T the awful compatibility or UI. If it could save a ppt without destroying it (or even display it right) it'd be useful; but it can't. If everyone you know uses OO, it's fine of course.

[General Zod]

It took me 15-20 minutes of searching after fiddling around with OoO Calc to figure out how to do simple things like a vlookup because it uses a completely different formula style than MS Office. No business wants to put up with retraining people to use a completely different format that nobody uses. About the only thing Open Office for is decent at for the price is its Word clone. Anything else is worthless.

[Formless]

Jesus christ, the hobbyhorsing...

When I type, midway through typing a word the program attempts to finish the word for me. This is annoying, how do I disable it?

(on version 3.1): go to "format," select "auto-correct," disable "while typing."

Is it really so hard to just answer a question without going on some inane rant?

Edit: it works the same way on the current version: I just checked.

[Stark]

Or you could go to Tools->AutoCorrect Options, click the Word Completion tab, and uncheck 'Enable word completion', but then you'd still be using OO.o and thus be a terrible person.

Thanks man!

[General Zod]

Jesus christ, the hobbyhorsing...

When I type, midway through typing a word the program attempts to finish the word for me. This is annoying, how do I disable it?

(on version 3.1): go to "format," select "auto-correct," disable "while typing."

Is it really so hard to just answer a question without going on some inane rant?

Edit: it works the same way on the current version: I just checked.

Is it really so hard to read the thread to find out that it had been answered already?

[Temujin]

Well my experience with Open Office came because my cheap ass company wouldn't pony up for a copy of MS Visio, even though we were doing a shit load of process mapping and org charting. The MS Draw function, while superficially similar, is a pretty crappy alternative once you've used Visio; especially if you have to use it alot. So I download OO to see if their draw function might be better, which it wasn't. I also found that the supposed compatibility in converting files back and forth between MS was limited at best.

As for MS 07, aside from Excel, I've generally found the updated programs to be an improvement, especially the ribbon, once you get used to it. In fact, I like it so much and have gotten so used to it now that it feels awkward to use the MS 03 programs on my computer at home.

[Shroom Man 777]

Thanks guys. The problem is that I don't have the software key for my MSWord and so the trial version kind of crapped up on me. Do I have to buy MS Word? Can't I use the one (trial version) that my laptop already comes with?

[Formless]

Jesus christ, the hobbyhorsing...

When I type, midway through typing a word the program attempts to finish the word for me. This is annoying, how do I disable it?

(on version 3.1): go to "format," select "auto-correct," disable "while typing."

Is it really so hard to just answer a question without going on some inane rant?

Edit: it works the same way on the current version: I just checked.

Is it really so hard to read the thread to find out that it had been answered already?

Way to miss the point.

[Thanas]

Quit bitching, guys, or this will gets HoS'd really fast.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ugh. I just want some answers for my damn predicament. My laptop is relatively new and comes with MS Word. Apparently the MS Word expired. Does this mean that I HAVE to buy MS Word itself? Or can I just do some jiggery-pokery and still be able to use the MS Word my laptop came with? Is the laptop's MS Word meant to expire, thus requiring me to BUY MS Word?

[Stark]

It must have been a demo, right? There's probably a special deal associated with it; the MS website has all kinds of cheap ways to buy Office (especially if you can claim to be student).

[MKSheppard]

Ugh. I just want some answers for my damn predicament. My laptop is relatively new and comes with MS Word. Apparently the MS Word expired

This happened to me. Last year I got a $500-600 laptop for researching to run my scanner at archives; and it came with the 60 day trial of MS Office Home and Student Edition.

Since I didn't use my laptop frequently, the Trial period quickly passed; and in the end I just said screw it -- I don't need all the advanced features of MS Office; and put OpenOffice on the laptop to do general basic every day dutywork.

When Office 14 comes out in June I'm going to look at getting it for my desktop; because I will need some of it's advanced features and greater ease of doing certain things for a project I am doing. However, for the other computers in the house; OpenOffice will suffice, due to it's price point -- and I will still retain it on my desktop, because it does do some things a bit better -- it depends on how well MS Office's HTML editor is.

[Executor32]

On Newegg you can get a copy of Office Home and Student '07 licensed for 3 PCs for $120, and you can upgrade it for free to Office 2010 when it comes out.