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

[undisclosed]

Interesting, my experience is that OO changes colors and formatting, I
can create a spreadsheet in Excel 2007 shoot it off to a colleague and
when it returns the formatting and all of the color in the thing has
changed and looks like hell. I would not hand a spreadsheet to a client
in the shape it is returned to me from OO.

I can't comment on OO document formating compatibilty with Word though.
After seeing what it does with spreadsheets, I have no interest in
finding out if it can hold the formating of a complex document from
Word.

Oh and the colleague was not aware of the changes in formatting in the
spreadsheets. It seems the original formatting was never correctly
viewed by OO software.

 

[Richard Rasker]

Could you outline a scenario where lack of a document feature would
cause loss of a negotiation, sale, or job?

I can think of a scenario where the use of an MS Office format will lose you
the negotiation, the sale /and/ your job -- when it turns out that the .doc
or .xls files you sent still contained sensitive information that was never
meant to leave the premises.

Richard Rasker

 

[RayLopez99]

Yes I too am wondering what specific thing would be missing that would
be so critical?

Lots of things that you probably never have used. Pivot tables in
Excel. Cross-references in Word. White collar stuff.

RL

 

[RayLopez99]

I can think of a scenario where the use of an MS Office format will lose you
the negotiation, the sale /and/ your job -- when it turns out that the .doc
or .xls files you sent still contained sensitive information that was never
meant to leave the premises.

That's old news Richard. You can ask the latest Word to strip out all
comments.

RL

Interesting, my experience is that OO changes colors and formatting,
I
can create a spreadsheet in Excel 2007 shoot it off to a colleague
and
when it returns the formatting and all of the color in the thing has
changed and looks like hell. I would not hand a spreadsheet to a
client
in the shape it is returned to me from OO.

I can't comment on OO document formating compatibilty with Word
though.
After seeing what it does with spreadsheets, I have no interest in
finding out if it can hold the formating of a complex document from
Word.

Oh and the colleague was not aware of the changes in formatting in
the
spreadsheets. It seems the original formatting was never correctly
viewed by OO software.

 

[Peter Köhlmann]

Lots of things that you probably never have used. Pivot tables in
Excel.

Too bad that OO has them

Cross-references in Word.

And, again, too bad for your imbecile trolls OO has that, too

White collar stuff.

You have never seen a "white collar". Living under bridges and posting
from internet cafes isn't exactly "white collar"

 

[Chris Ahlstrom]

Richard Rasker pulled this Usenet boner:

I can think of a scenario where the use of an MS Office format will lose you
the negotiation, the sale /and/ your job -- when it turns out that the .doc
or .xls files you sent still contained sensitive information that was never
meant to leave the premises.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3154479.stm

Analysis of hidden information in the so-called Iraq "dodgy dossier"
showed, among other things, the names of the four civil servants who
worked on it.

Downing Street press office head Alastair Campbell had to explain who
these people were to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select
Committee investigating the genesis of the plagiarised document.

. . .

The UK government has now largely abandoned Microsoft Word for documents
that become public and has turned to documents created using Adobe
Acrobat which uses the Portable Data Format (PDF).

Looks like "Word" lost one of its jobs.

Unix and Linux users can turn to tools such as Antiword and Catdoc to
turn the document, including its formatting information, into a simple
text file.

. . .

He gathered about 100,000 Word documents from sites on the web and every
single one of them had hidden information.

. . .

"Microsoft is aware of the functionality of metadata being stored within
Word 97 documents and would advise users to follow the instructions laid
out in [the Microsoft Knowledge Base - see Related Internet Links]," says
a spokesperson. "However, Microsoft do not wish to comment on how
customers use the functionality within our software."

 

[Felis silvestris]

Why would I give a rat's ass? Anyone in the world running Linux, MS or
MAC can simply and easily download and install OOo for free. BTW - MS
Office is not even compatible with MS Office. You're in pretty good shape
if you happen to have the same exact version - otherwise it's no more
compatible than OOo.

I have several times used OOo to convert documents between mutually
incompatible Word versions. Not lately, so I just don't remember which
versions, nor do I care.

 

[ToolPackinMama]

Richard Rasker pulled this Usenet boner:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3154479.stm

Analysis of hidden information in the so-called Iraq "dodgy dossier"
showed, among other things, the names of the four civil servants who
worked on it.

Downing Street press office head Alastair Campbell had to explain who
these people were to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select
Committee investigating the genesis of the plagiarised document.

. . .

The UK government has now largely abandoned Microsoft Word for documents
that become public and has turned to documents created using Adobe
Acrobat which uses the Portable Data Format (PDF).

Looks like "Word" lost one of its jobs.

Good Lord!

 

[tsang sir]

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.