I don't need a full office suite, so I was considering going with the free open office for my small word processing and spreadsheet needs. What I would like it for it to be compatible with MS word in case I decide to upgrade one day, or if I need to transfer files from my computer to a friends' or family members' who has MS word.
Just wondering if anyone has any experience with the two.
Thanks.
Open office is suppose to be fully compatible with MS Word. It is a choice that is made by many here.
I have both installed ( MS office on a trial) and Open Office full suite and have never had any problems switching documents between the two.
Danny
excellent, thanks guys. going to give open office a try and if i feel i need more, ill grab a copy of ms office
I use OOo writer and calc.
You can change to any "Save as Type" file, but leave the "Automatic file name extension" checked.
I unchecked it once, and found out on their forum that, that was the reason why MS Word and Xcel could not work with the OOo file.
I haven't had to visit the forum in a while, but they are current, reasonably quick to respond, and friendly. Forum at OOoForum.org
The only thing that is not compatible between the both (and probably never will be) is the scripting language (that you use for Macros )
It's because of licensing issues with VB that Open Office uses a different dialect.
So you might run into problems if you create extensive spreadsheets and want to switch at some point.
It is not really difficult to rewrite those macros in the other dialect but you have to be aware of the fact that those documents/spread sheets that include any kind of macros will not work as expected without manual intervention no matter what direction to switch to.
That being said , I used both for decades and never ran into anything that wasn't easily resolved.
-DG
There was a point, about a year or so ago for me when I had neither installed. Wanting to save some cash I installed OO. I used it to write up a report for one of my University classes. Took the file on a flash drive to class on Monday, opened the .doc file in Office 2007 (university only uses MS Office.) The formatting looked all out of joint, so I ended spending half an hour correcting it to the standard format required by the University. Admittedly this was over a year ago, maybe OO formatting perfectly converts between MS Office and OO itself now? I ended up buying MS Office
You could also use the Office Web Apps that come free with any Windows Live account (also free). They might be a bit basic for your needs though, but maybe worth a look
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