openoffice?

try it out and see if you like it, It's free to download. I've used it before and had no problems with it.

^^ Yep, best way to find out is to give it a shot. Odds are good that it will open everything you have without many, if any, issues. I'm considering dumping MSOffice from my basic users and going to OpenOffice because it would cut my annual costs by about $20k.

You may have trouble with really old files like Lout123 or Wordperfect 5.1...or maybe really new formats like Office 2007 docx files. But the overwhelming majority of file formats you can use without trouble.

I've used it and I really like it. The only disadvantage is that if you're sending a doc or spreadsheet as an attachment the receiving computer has to have open office to view it. I think the open office version of excel is easier to use.

Firenutz said:

I've used it and I really like it. The only disadvantage is that if you're sending a doc or spreadsheet as an attachment the receiving computer has to have open office to view it. I think the open office version of excel is easier to use.

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I haven't used it in a while but I thought you could save in different formats. I could be misremembering though...

Tarmsolo60 said:

Firenutz said:

I've used it and I really like it. The only disadvantage is that if you're sending a doc or spreadsheet as an attachment the receiving computer has to have open office to view it. I think the open office version of excel is easier to use.

Click to expand...

I haven't used it in a while but I thought you could save in different formats. I could be misremembering though...

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Could be, I didn't really mess with it much. I sent a spreadsheet from my laptop to my work email and the work computer wouldn't open it up.

I have used Open Office for years- and MS Works and MS Office. I can say that you should have no problems at all with Open Office. It opens and saves all types of documents, in all types of formats. It is very easy to use, a direct replacement for the MS products. It has an installed base in the millions and an active community of users for questions and content.

I would not hesitate to recomend it- and as an example... last weekend a senior friend (70+) and his wife came over with a sony vio laptop that his daughter had sent them. I helped them to set-up their dial-up account with Mozilla Firebird to surf the web, Mozilla Thunderbird for E-mail and installed Open Office for them to do documents. These are people who have never had a computer. In two hours they were E-mailing their Daughter, and could open and save a word doc.

As said above- try it, it's FREE !

I have it an it seems good so far.

I have had a ton of formatting issues opening word made .docs in openoffice and viceversa.

I've been using OpenOffice exclusively, for years. In fact, I haven't touched a Microsoft product in five years. All open-source for me.

The latest versions of Open Office are very compatible backward with all commonly used word processing formats. I'd make sure you get the latest version and any patches that are out (if any). It looks and acts very much like Word (but free).

Then once you're good with that, consider giving up Windows for Linux, and kiss Bill Gates goodbye.

Also, try google documents - for most people...unless you are in word processing all day, etc, this will do a nice job. It also allows easy online sharing and markup, as well as access to your docs from everywhere and any computer. That, in itself, is a revolution. I use gmail, google docs, etc. and find it to be quite refreshing never to have to say "it's on my other computer".

Backpack09 said:

I have had a ton of formatting issues opening word made .docs in openoffice and viceversa.

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Me too, especially with bullet points. Otherwise good - can't complain about the price. You may also want to look at zoho.com, online editing (not affiliated) ....

It's the obscure things that OO has issue with, but with ever update that is changed. Some of the more involved embedded XML stuff that is included with MS Office 2007 can cause issues with OO, but when it comes down to it, there are very few people who utilize that.

OO is a beast too, I like to keep a more advanced text editor around for quick witting needs, and use OO for more involved work.

I use MS at work, and open office at home. I do see a lot of formatting issues between the two. Some of my more intense XLS sheets will not work at all in Calc, but for basic stuff translating between the two is not too bad.

While I like the idea of open source, since I spend so much time on the MS tools, I frequently find it easier to use the MS stuff. However, I would not pay for it.

I spend about 95% of the time booted into Linux at both home and at work. I use Open Office every day at work in Linux, and in Windows on the rare occasions that I boot into XP or Windows 7 Beta.

The only times that I have found a need to use another PC in the office that has MS Office installed have involved editing Word documents that include a lot of advanced formatting. For the features that most of us use, it works great.

It's well worth the download, and may save you a lot of money, since Microsoft Office isn't exactly cheap.

-SF

There are sometimes translation problems with formatting, bullet points, and so forth when going between OO and MS products, but the text content is generally well preserved - it just looks a little bit different.

However I would say that I've had fewer hassles going between MS and OO doc formats than I have opening a document created in one version of MS Orifice with a different version of MS Orifice...

It is also important to remember that while OO has filters to do a pretty good job of reading and writing MS Office formats, it can't do as much with macros - so a complex Excell spreadsheet may not come through well if it uses lots of macros, especially Visual Basic based stuff... The other issue is that OO can read and write MS formats pretty readily (and would do better if MS would more fully release documentation on their proprietary formats - currently the OO filters are created primarily via reverse engineering) MS has refused until recently to implement the ability to read / write the publicly documented OO formats, and even the filter they now have doesn't work very well...

I find that it works best if I always save documents in both ODF and MS-doc formats if I need to exchange them with other people that are still stuck in Gatesville...

Note that ODF, the native Open Office file format is well documented, and supported by many products, and was the first ISO accepted standard for that type of doccument - it passed ISO using the normal procedures, and without any questions of bribery or other suspect activity. OOXML, the alleged format that MS is using is NOT fully supported by ANY product (including the latest MS Office), has lots of holes in it's documentation, and was rushed through ISO using an oddball "expedited" process - arguably in violation of ISO's own rules, and with considerable evidence of bribery and corruption being exercised....

Gooserider - running in a Microsoft free environment!

I run a small business, with 4 store locations and the main office. We use MS office in the main office, just because I like it better and am used to it, but I have Open office in the stores and they use it extensively (it is set up to save in the native MS office formats) with no problems.
At home I bough the home MS version that you can install in 3 computers and have it installed in all 3.
I like Word and Excel better, but Open Office does a great job especially for FREE.