A Microsoft Office (Excel, Word) forum. OfficeFrustration

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » OfficeFrustration forum » Microsoft Office » General Discussions
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read  

Do you use OpenOffice and do you find it is not compatible withOffice Word?



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #31  
Old April 8th, 2010, 06:35 AM posted to microsoft.public.office.misc
tsang sir[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3
Default Do you use OpenOffice and do you find it is not compatible with Of

Another incompatibility of OpenOffice.org with MS Office is that OO can open
corrupted files which cannot be opened by (or even crash) MS office.
  #32  
Old April 10th, 2010, 04:47 AM posted to microsoft.public.office.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Dennis K[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1
Default Do you use OpenOffice and do you find it is not compatible withOffice Word?

On 04/07/2010 11:48 PM, RayLopez99 wrote:
On Apr 7, 11:57 am, ceed wrote:
On Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:59:30 -0500, RayLopez99
wrote:

I've heard that Open Office is at best "99%" the same as Office Word,
but I'm concerned with it being 100%, since many of my Word documents
are complex.


I am negotiating legal contracts and the last (less than) 1%
incompatibility forces me to run Word under Crossover Linux. My employer
let's me use Linux as my work OS, but I am required to support Word 100%.
The main issues are little formatting differences when I edit a word
document and save it with OpenOffice, and change tracking which doesn't
always work reliably.



Anybody have experience in OpenOffice with complex documents? Is it
true that somethings just won't translate properly to and from Office
Word?


If keeping formatting exactly like it was in the word document is
important you will see some problems using OpenOffice. There's good advice
here for getting OO to play as nice as possible when working with Word
documents:


Yep, yep, yep.

Ladies and Gentlemen--I introduce for your consideration Exhibit A,
marked "Ceed".

Ceed is a skilled white collar professional, dealing with multi-
million dollar negotiations. You just don't put anybody in charge of
this kind of work, as I've been there and done that.

Ceed has an open mind about Linux--as you can see, he's not prejudiced
against Linux but to the contrary uses Linux (which is more than I
would do).

But Ceed knows who butters their bread--and it's Microsoft Office
suite, specifically Word. You don't play games by sending a document
to the other side in "Open Office format" anymore than you would play
games by sending it in "WordStar", "WordPerfect" (which ironically was
the de facto standard for legal documents years ago), or Unix "LaTex"
for that matter.

Basketball analogy: when you have a open unopposed shot at the basket
and you need two points to win, you dunk. You don't try a fancy three
pointer. No need for that.

Baseball analogy: you cleanly catch a pop fly ball to get the last
out with both hands in front of your face. You don't do a one-handed
'basket' catch from the waist level.

Football (soccer) analogy: when you have an open goal, unopposed as
the goalie has fallen down, you kick it in with your shooting foot,
you don't try and scissor kick behind your back, kick it up in the air
and head it in, or kicking it in with your non-kicking foot, or, God
forbid, pass the ball to a teammate.

Football (American) analogy: First and goal from the 1 yard line to
win: you have a future Hall of Fame running back who has already run
against the opposing team successfully all day. Give him the ball.
You don't try passing or a trick play.

Race car analogy: you are in the lead and the checkered flag has been
given on the straightaway. Full throttle to victory; you don't give
up the lead and let somebody get ahead of you so you can "slingshot"
off their slipstream to regain the lead in the last few yards.

Office analogy: OFFICE. That's why they call it OFFICE. It does not
get simpler than that.

I rest my case.

RL



99.999% of people couldn't give a rats ass about the .0001% that have
the capital to deal with such contracts.

For every person who's going to get into a titter and change their minds
regarding deals worth $$$$$ over some stupid font (how do these people
get into that position in the first place?) there are 10,000 people
where the freedom not to be jerked around by some two bit company so
they can access their own data is more important.

Honestly, it sounds like people who negotiate these deals are the
biggest whingers and primadonnas that there are. I know people like
that, who get obsessive about the size of the font in a document, etc.
Whats worse, is that we are supposed to care for the poor darls.

If you want 100% compatibility, then you use the same version of the
same software. It wouldn't matter of everyone was using GEOS on
Commodore 64's. Hey, that would ensure 100% compatibility too! What if
everyone was using GEOS?

In the office I work at, people would write documents in MS word, and I
couldn't open them with my copy of MS word. With a 'converter' addon
installed, I could make changes, but then it would lose details.

Haven't come across that with OO.

The problem is that people still insist on closed, changing standards.
ODF provides an alternative way to exchange documents, which greater
interoperability. If anyone is to 'blame', its people who still insist
on closed standards, thereby forcing others no only to use these
standards, but forcing them to pay $$$'s to upgrade.










  #33  
Old April 12th, 2010, 07:30 AM posted to microsoft.public.office.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
ceed[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3
Default Do you use OpenOffice and do you find it is not compatible withOffice Word?

On Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:48:03 -0500, RayLopez99
wrote:

On Apr 7, 11:57 am, ceed wrote:
On Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:59:30 -0500, RayLopez99
wrote:

I've heard that Open Office is at best "99%" the same as Office Word,
but I'm concerned with it being 100%, since many of my Word documents
are complex.


I am negotiating legal contracts and the last (less than) 1%
incompatibility forces me to run Word under Crossover Linux. My
employer let's me use Linux as my work OS, but I am required to support
Word 100%. The main issues are little formatting differences when I
edit a word document and save it with OpenOffice, and change tracking
which doesn't always work reliably.



Anybody have experience in OpenOffice with complex documents? Is it
true that somethings just won't translate properly to and from Office
Word?


If keeping formatting exactly like it was in the word document is
important you will see some problems using OpenOffice. There's good
advice here for getting OO to play as nice as possible when working
with Word documents:


Yep, yep, yep.

Ladies and Gentlemen--I introduce for your consideration Exhibit A,
marked "Ceed".

Ceed is a skilled white collar professional, dealing with multi-
million dollar negotiations. You just don't put anybody in charge of
this kind of work, as I've been there and done that.

Ceed has an open mind about Linux--as you can see, he's not prejudiced
against Linux but to the contrary uses Linux (which is more than I
would do).

But Ceed knows who butters their bread--and it's Microsoft Office
suite, specifically Word. You don't play games by sending a document
to the other side in "Open Office format" anymore than you would play
games by sending it in "WordStar", "WordPerfect" (which ironically was
the de facto standard for legal documents years ago), or Unix "LaTex"
for that matter.

Basketball analogy: when you have a open unopposed shot at the basket
and you need two points to win, you dunk. You don't try a fancy three
pointer. No need for that.

Baseball analogy: you cleanly catch a pop fly ball to get the last
out with both hands in front of your face. You don't do a one-handed
'basket' catch from the waist level.

Football (soccer) analogy: when you have an open goal, unopposed as
the goalie has fallen down, you kick it in with your shooting foot,
you don't try and scissor kick behind your back, kick it up in the air
and head it in, or kicking it in with your non-kicking foot, or, God
forbid, pass the ball to a teammate.

Football (American) analogy: First and goal from the 1 yard line to
win: you have a future Hall of Fame running back who has already run
against the opposing team successfully all day. Give him the ball.
You don't try passing or a trick play.

Race car analogy: you are in the lead and the checkered flag has been
given on the straightaway. Full throttle to victory; you don't give
up the lead and let somebody get ahead of you so you can "slingshot"
off their slipstream to regain the lead in the last few yards.

Office analogy: OFFICE. That's why they call it OFFICE. It does not
get simpler than that.

I rest my case.

RL


You pretty much sum it up but you use far too many words.

--
//ceed
  #34  
Old April 12th, 2010, 07:37 AM posted to microsoft.public.office.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
ceed[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3
Default Do you use OpenOffice and do you find it is not compatible withOffice Word?

On Wed, 07 Apr 2010 05:52:52 -0500, Chris Ahlstrom
wrote:

http://is.gd/bilIL-

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13880_3-9864262-68.html
Many of Writer's advanced features aren't supported in Word, such as
page
breaks and custom hyphenation.
The article (from early 2008) is out-of-date on this particular:
Writer retains Word's character and paragraph styles fairly well, but
graphics aligned in Word as characters don't convert to Writer.
This is no longer true -- OpenOffice provides explicit support for Word's
handling a graphic as if it were a character.


If I send an OpenOffice edited contract to some customer legal I always
get a "that's not how it looked before" or "the paragraphs looks
different" or even "I think you need to upgrade Office". Since this is
work I do not have time to look into what for me is details, but for legal
is major: If something doesn't look /exactly/ like it did it can't be
trusted. And these people are not interested in me telling them how great
odf is and how these changes are trivial and can safely be ignored.

I use OO for as much as I can, and we are beginning to see odf contract
templates around so I am hoping I will be Office free in a couple of
years. I was really happy when Crossover came along. It meant I could
ditch Windows forever. It will be even better when I do not even need
Crossover anymore.


--
//ceed
  #35  
Old April 12th, 2010, 07:48 AM posted to microsoft.public.office.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Peter Köhlmann
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2
Default Do you use OpenOffice and do you find it is not compatible with Office Word?

ceed wrote:

On Wed, 07 Apr 2010 05:52:52 -0500, Chris Ahlstrom
wrote:

http://is.gd/bilIL-

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13880_3-9864262-68.html
Many of Writer's advanced features aren't supported in Word, such as
page
breaks and custom hyphenation.
The article (from early 2008) is out-of-date on this particular:
Writer retains Word's character and paragraph styles fairly well, but
graphics aligned in Word as characters don't convert to Writer.
This is no longer true -- OpenOffice provides explicit support for
Word's handling a graphic as if it were a character.


If I send an OpenOffice edited contract to some customer legal I always
get a "that's not how it looked before" or "the paragraphs looks
different" or even "I think you need to upgrade Office". Since this is
work I do not have time to look into what for me is details, but for
legal is major: If something doesn't look /exactly/ like it did it can't
be trusted.


In that case: Stay away from *any* version of MS Office, too.
Because it does *not* render the documents completely the same between
versions. Not even with the *same* version, but different printers

--
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

  #36  
Old April 12th, 2010, 07:56 AM posted to microsoft.public.office.misc
ceed[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3
Default Do you use OpenOffice and do you find it is not compatible withOffice Word?

On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:48:26 -0500, Peter Köhlmann
wrote:

If I send an OpenOffice edited contract to some customer legal I always
get a "that's not how it looked before" or "the paragraphs looks
different" or even "I think you need to upgrade Office". Since this is
work I do not have time to look into what for me is details, but for
legal is major: If something doesn't look /exactly/ like it did it can't
be trusted.

In that case: Stay away from *any* version of MS Office, too.
Because it does *not* render the documents completely the same between
versions. Not even with the *same* version, but different printers


True, there's some differences between versions of Office and I do at
times get "you need to update your Office installation". However, among my
customers it's a much more "acceptable" having Office version problems
than if I tell them I use OpenOffice. I do not like this situation and
wish I could use OO all the time, but it seems like it will take some time
before I am totally free of it. To me the most important aspect of this is
that I can work and play without Windows. There was a time where I needed
to dual-boot. I do not want that back.


--
//ceed
  #37  
Old April 12th, 2010, 08:19 AM posted to microsoft.public.office.misc
Gordon[_9_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 198
Default Do you use OpenOffice and do you find it is not compatible withOffice Word?

On 12/04/2010 07:48, Peter Köhlmann wrote:


In that case: Stay away from *any* version of MS Office, too.
Because it does *not* render the documents completely the same between
versions. Not even with the *same* version, but different printers


I concur with that - I have NEVER understood why the printer should have
a bearing on the DISPLAY of a document - but it does. Totally weird.
  #38  
Old April 12th, 2010, 01:12 PM posted to microsoft.public.office.misc
Bob I
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,698
Default Do you use OpenOffice and do you find it is not compatible withOffice Word?



Gordon wrote:
On 12/04/2010 07:48, Peter Köhlmann wrote:


In that case: Stay away from *any* version of MS Office, too.
Because it does *not* render the documents completely the same between
versions. Not even with the *same* version, but different printers


I concur with that - I have NEVER understood why the printer should have
a bearing on the DISPLAY of a document - but it does. Totally weird.


Because different printers have different capabilities. Margin
requirements for paper handling, fonts etc.(set your default printer to
a "generic text printer" and see what happen)

  #39  
Old April 12th, 2010, 01:35 PM posted to microsoft.public.office.misc
Gordon[_13_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3,406
Default Do you use OpenOffice and do you find it is not compatible with Office Word?


"Bob I" wrote in message
...


Gordon wrote:
On 12/04/2010 07:48, Peter Köhlmann wrote:


In that case: Stay away from *any* version of MS Office, too.
Because it does *not* render the documents completely the same between
versions. Not even with the *same* version, but different printers


I concur with that - I have NEVER understood why the printer should have
a bearing on the DISPLAY of a document - but it does. Totally weird.


Because different printers have different capabilities. Margin
requirements for paper handling, fonts etc.(set your default printer to a
"generic text printer" and see what happen)


yes but that should only be a factor when PRINTING, not DISPLAYING....a PDF
document looks the same on ANY machine, no matter what type of printer is
attached. Why should a Word document not do the same?

  #40  
Old April 12th, 2010, 04:12 PM posted to microsoft.public.office.misc
Bob I
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,698
Default Do you use OpenOffice and do you find it is not compatible withOffice Word?



Gordon wrote:


"Bob I" wrote in message
...



Gordon wrote:

On 12/04/2010 07:48, Peter Köhlmann wrote:


In that case: Stay away from *any* version of MS Office, too.
Because it does *not* render the documents completely the same between
versions. Not even with the *same* version, but different printers


I concur with that - I have NEVER understood why the printer should
have a bearing on the DISPLAY of a document - but it does. Totally
weird.



Because different printers have different capabilities. Margin
requirements for paper handling, fonts etc.(set your default printer
to a "generic text printer" and see what happen)


yes but that should only be a factor when PRINTING, not DISPLAYING....a
PDF document looks the same on ANY machine, no matter what type of
printer is attached. Why should a Word document not do the same?


PDF is an image file intended primarily for onscreen viewing, while Word
documents are designed to be put on paper and so are formatted for the
destination printer.(remember WYSIWYG?) Since it's been that way for
~20 years I suspect they figure they have it the way its needed ;-)

 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 03:57 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 OfficeFrustration.
The comments are property of their posters.