Open Office VS Office 2007

[mlevy]

If you already have the copy of Office 2007, stick to it. OpenOffice is not going to beat it in terms of functionality or intuitiveness. And in terms of Office file compatibility, nothing is going to beat Office at its own game currently. To me, what truly sells me on Office is the Ribbon UI in Office 2007 and 2010; after using that, Office 2003 feels extremely convoluted and dated.

Regarding the bolded statement. That's not 100% true. I do PC support for a large corporation, I've had people call in with Excel files they couldn't open (.xls, still on Office 2000 as standard for another month or so), Excel wouldn't open them but I was able to open them in Calc (OOO's Excel equal), re-save with a new name making no other changes and it would then open in Excel 2000.


Regarding the Ribbon being the reason to use 2007, try the interface in 2010. I've been using it at work since Office 2010 was still Beta (we were beta testers) and LOVE the customizability of it.

Hi there

Not sure of your problem with Office 2000 but I've had UTTELY NO PROBLEM in opening ANY version of office files from Office 97 onwards in all versions of office (office XP, Office 2003, Office 2007 and Office 2010).

I suspect as is common in a lot of corporate environments that when Office is installed on remote PC's not all the functionality is installed -- you are probably missing some of the "converters" in various versions of office.

The user probably just clicks install and the process is automatic without any choices or custom options being available. This keeps it simpler for central administration too -- but often the bog standard functionality isn't quite enough.

Note it's harder to read OFFICE 2010 docs say in Office 2000 but it CAN be done if you save in the CORRECT format -- and don't have any fancy formatting.

Cheers
jimbo

The problem was NOT in converting from a newer Office file to Office 2000, it was a plain .xls file. Office wasn't asking to install any extra features (the image installs all features), it was just crashing when opening the file. Opening with OOO and re-saving with a new file name was enough to get it to open in Excel.

Trust me, I'm WELL aware of the converter pack, it's actually installed on all new or reimaged PCs in our environment and available to anyone that doesn't have it.

 

[dajogejr]

I just got done rolling 2010 to my whole company.
Going from 03 to 07, then almost immediately to 2010 had a few challenges.
(I Bought 2007 in the window I needed to so I could qualify for the free 2010 upgrade).

How/where to find things (users of office from the old days, myself included, takes a little getting used to where things are in the ribbon Interface)
2010 makes this better by being able to customize it, use short cuts (or quick links as they call it).

Outlook 2010 is the best email client I've used to date, bar none.

The only real issue we had was certain Toshiba Printers (eStudio series) had an issue with excel 2010.

We had to resort to a new/beta driver from Toshiba to get it working, but that was it.
The rest was user issue/awareness.

Office is the standard. Open Office is great for home use, on a budget, etc.
But you can get home/student for 150 bucks or so. If that's in your budget, I say go for it.