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General Discussion>OpenOffice - Anybody Use It?
RGD. 08:46 PM 08-29-2009
Like the title says - likes, dislikes, etc -


Thanks,

Ron
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dunng 08:58 PM 08-29-2009
Yes, all of my home computers have it and any PCs that I fix get it installed if they do not have a license for MS Office. No real complaints, I just change the options so it saves all the files in Office formats for compatibility... :-)
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Tenor CS 09:04 PM 08-29-2009
I use it constantly. I run both Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP. I have MS Office installed on my XP side, but I rarely use it. OpenOffice does pretty much everything I need it to.

There is also a "portable apps" version that can run from a flash drive. Very useful when you are working at a strange computer that doesn't have MS Office on it.
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hotreds 09:09 PM 08-29-2009
Yes- I don't have MS Office- never really felt it was worth the huge dollar investment.
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XTRazzer 09:41 PM 08-29-2009
I've been using it on my laptop until recently when MS Office Home & Student dropped to under $100 for a 3 PC license. Although I do still keep both installed, just in case.

The menu layout is different and some functions are called by other names than MS uses for its applications. Once I got thrrough some of that, things do go faster. But overall I still feel the programs run slower than MS Office.

On the plus side documents can be done quite quickly in OpenOffice. I do like some of the user interfaces and options better than MS Word

Probably the biggest gripe for me is on the spreadsheet side of things. If I took an MS Excel created file, and then used OpenOffice, a lot of the data didn't transfer too well.
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itsme_timd 09:46 PM 08-29-2009
A lot of my field techs have Excel docs that they need to fill out for job completions. If they don't have MS Office I always recommend Open Office to them and it gets the job done.

No real experience with any apps other than the word processor and spreadsheet but both of those work well for us. And the price is definitely right. :-)
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Eleven 09:48 PM 08-29-2009
Originally Posted by dunng:
Yes, all of my home computers have it and any PCs that I fix get it installed if they do not have a license for MS Office. No real complaints, I just change the options so it saves all the files in Office formats for compatibility... :-)
What he said, I never use MS Office anymore :-)
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RGD. 09:52 PM 08-29-2009
Thanks for the replies.

A friend of mine does not have Office on her laptop and she really can't afford to spend the money right now - so I thought it might fit the bill for her. In addition I have been thinking about it.

I'll send her the link for it.

Thanks again everyone.


Ron
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alley00p 11:21 PM 08-29-2009
I actually have a license through work to use MS Office, but because I don't have a CD/ROM drive on my Netbook, I can't install it on there.

So instead, I went to OpenOffice for the Netbook machine. It does everything I need, but I have to agree with one of the comments above regarding the spreadsheet program. A few of my spreadsheets in excel don't translate properly. But that's just a minor problem. :-)

Can't beat the price!!! :-)


:-)
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bigloo 11:39 PM 08-29-2009
I like it but find the plotting in the spreadsheet to be very poor and hard to use compared to excel. Otherwise, if this is a not an issue, especially for home use, cannot beat it.
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Jason 12:28 AM 08-30-2009
I've been using it on a visitation basis for many years and it's always getting better/more compatible with MSO. Unfortunately all I use MSO for is advanced spreadsheets I build for other folks to use on a network and a lot of the more complex forumlas simply don't work right in OO.

Excel has been so robust in the formulas department as well as working with a myriad of external data sources for so long that even if OO caught up compatability-wise I'd have a too hard a time learning all the new ins and outs of Calc to switch for good I imagine.

Writer is fine as a Word replacement I reckon but this is from a guy that uses Notepad 95% of the time
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Barteur 08:42 AM 08-30-2009
I use it, sometime it takes me time to find myself but for what it cost I am very satisfy with it.
Also if you have corrupted files from Office most of the time Open Office can open them.
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BigAl_SC 09:35 AM 08-30-2009
Originally Posted by XTRazzer:
I've been using it on my laptop until recently when MS Office Home & Student dropped to under $100 for a 3 PC license. Although I do still keep both installed, just in case.



Probably the biggest gripe for me is on the spreadsheet side of things. If I took an MS Excel created file, and then used OpenOffice, a lot of the data didn't transfer too well.
This is me. Open worked great when MS was $500 but if you watch sales you can get Home and Student for $79. Most of my work things come Adobe or Excel and Open kind of mess's with the Excel data. I switched to H&O for the small price.
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Titan410 04:30 PM 08-30-2009
I switched to a Mac just under a year ago and installed Open Office then. It does all I need it to do. That said, Open Office tends to be a little "different" and I haven't used it enough to figure it out completely yet, but the price is right.
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floydp 04:48 PM 08-30-2009
Its free and its competent Ron. I've been using it on a Macbook and Linux for a few years now.
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