New PC Build - MS or Open Office

[Custom_Grafx]

I'll be building my PC tonight (can't wait), and am considering not even installing MS Office, and using open office instead.

I've never used open office, but from what I have read so far, can't see what I'll be missing out on functionality-wise.

Is there anyone out there who uses open office regularly and knows the ups/downs of it by any chance?

Thanks in advance.

 

[iSign]

...am considering not even installing MS Office, and using open office instead...
can't see what I'll be missing out on functionality-wise...

well, I don't know what open office is... does it open other peoples MS office files, like excel & power point etc. etc??

 

[Custom_Grafx]

well, I don't know what open office is... does it open other peoples MS office files, like excel & power point etc. etc??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org

It's a free open source software which is supposed to do just about everything that MS Office does.

 

[GAC05]

Open office seems to work ok here to open and edit all those killer power point and word layouts I get.
It's running on win7 64 bit.
wayne k
guam usa

 

[Locals Find!]

I have been using open office for a few years. You will run into an occasional issue with formatting on documents when bringing them in from Regular office. However, I never had it be so bad as to be an issue.

For the savings of a few hundred dollars well worth using.

 

[njshorts]

Give it a try. We abandoned MS office 4-5 years ago, and have OpenOffice on all shop machines.

 

[signswi]

By the way there's been a split in the community and I'd recommend LibreOffice over OpenOffice. It's the exact same software, but OpenOffice is a name owned by Oracle and LibreOffice is the result of the open source community wanting a clean break from Oracle. All of the main developers are now working on LibreOffice.

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Google Docs!

 

[CES020]

It's all we've used for years now, but we do occasionally get a word document that doesn't come over right. It doesn't seem to like to bring .docx formats over very well.

There are a number of free conversion sites out there, so when we run into those, we can normally get it converted to a pdf or something, for free.

If you're using it for daily operations of letters, spreadsheets, etc., you should be just fine.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Thanks everyone.

My main concern is that I run my accounting with excel, so wondering if I can simply use my existing spreadsheets/formulas the same way.

I think I will download, install, try and find out, and report back. Seems like whatever difference there may be, it can be overcome.

 

[Mike F]

By the way there's been a split in the community and I'd recommend LibreOffice over OpenOffice. It's the exact same software, but OpenOffice is a name owned by Oracle and LibreOffice is the result of the open source community wanting a clean break from Oracle. All of the main developers are now working on LibreOffice.

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/

Was gonna say pretty much the same thing. Google docs isn't too bad either, although I'm not a huge fan of web apps and keeping my files in the "cloud" in general.

 

[bob]

I'll be building my PC tonight (can't wait), and am considering not even installing MS Office, and using open office instead.

I've never used open office, but from what I have read so far, can't see what I'll be missing out on functionality-wise.

Is there anyone out there who uses open office regularly and knows the ups/downs of it by any chance?

Thanks in advance.

It's fine if you never use macros or write any code behind you Office applications. Stuff from MS Office will load and function as long as there's not any macros. These absolutely positively will not work under Open Office.

Open Office's programming scheme is a totally different and, in my never humble opinion, functionally incomprehensible. Microsoft's is bad enough but Open office's is bizarre by comparison.

 

[jc1cell]

My main concern is that I run my accounting with excel, so wondering if I can simply use my existing spreadsheets/formulas the same way.

You will more than likely have some issues with this. I have some simple excel files that give me some fits when I open in Open Office.

jc

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Much like my post from earlier this week.... I received a word doc from someone. I opened it in Office 2011, an older office and OpenOffice. All 3 opened the file up differently

 

[Bly]

I installed MS Office on my new PC.

MS documents are flakily formatted as they are without bringing in another element of doubt.

 

[signswi]

Much like my post from earlier this week.... I received a word doc from someone. I opened it in Office 2011, an older office and OpenOffice. All 3 opened the file up differently

All three are text processors, not layout applications. Which is why we don't support MS Word as a valid art file format. The same file opened in the same version of the same text processor but on different computers will even flow differently.

 

[round man]

Ok lets see here ,...mickey soft has spent millions upon millions writing and developing mickeysoft orfice,...along comes open office,...seeing as mickeysoft sets the standards by which word processors and spreadsheet ledgers work they are gonna let a freebie program work perfect???? ya think they might change some code or rewrite the program so it doesn't quite work right in the freebie program,..nahhhhh,....that wouldn't be fair,.... hehehehehehe,..they are gonna keep things just the same so this new freebie version can put all their work into the useless expenditure column on the business speadsheets of the many thousands of thousands of paying customers they already have,...I mean,..what have they got to lose??????

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Thanks all, fortunately I was able to use my install disc of MS 2007 on the new machine - I thought I had used up all 3 licences but obviously not. Glad that's one other thing I don't have to learn...

 

[Sticker Dude]

So... what does this PC consist of?

 

[Custom_Grafx]

So... what does this PC consist of?

That's for another thread which I will start up soon