So I’m thinking about switching word processors-- the Redmond-built one is irritating me daily for one reason or another, and it sounds like Open Office is a good option, and I’m all about open sourcity. So, is it for me?
Concerns: I love EndNote. Are they kind of compatible (like for inserting footnotes, mostly)?
Does it have a full range of unicode characters?
Does it not do all those irritating automagical formatting things that MS Word does? Will it do what I tell it to do and not insist that it knows what I want? Will I get a footnote on the same page as a footnote reference number?
Custom dictionary for spellcheck?
Compatibility with MS Word so I can convert thing and send them to others still caught in the trap?
I’ve also been thinking of LaTex or something but I’m a little lo-tech. I am open to evangelizing, however.
Open Office is fully compatable with Word. I’ve used it countless times to write papers, save them as .doc’s, and print them on my school’s computers running Word. There’s never been any problem.
I only really use it to read the odd .doc file, but it’s free. So, unless you’re on a 56k line, go ahead and get it. If you’re on dialup and don’t feel like downloading a 78 meg file, I could send you a CD.
Ok, I’ve downloaded an OpenOffice version or flavor called NeoOfficeJ built for OS X and so far it seems glorious, and reads the old files great; except for the EndNote thing-- it takes in the old footnotes fine, but doesn’t have that communication with EndNote that MS Word does. Any ideas for workarounds or does one go oldschool and actually write footnotes the way we used to?
AFAICT, EndNote and OpenOffice aren’t compatible. You can insert endnotes, though. Just go to Insert > Footnote on the menu and select “endnote” as the type. The rest should be automatic.
If you are in a position where people send you documents written in Word, you won’t be able to read all of them in OO. If you are in a position where you send people your OO documents that they will open in Word, they won’t be able to read all of them. If your writing is for yourself, everything is fine. If you need to interface with the outside wordl, OO is severly broken.
Also: OO has 90% of what Word does, and that sounds pretty cool. Unless you actually use the other 10% of things, in which case you’ll be very disappointed in it.
The truth is I don’t remember. Lame, I know. Every six or eight months I get in a mood and attempt to replace Windows on my computer with Linux. I’m a big Linux fan, but I quickly get pissed off that it isn’t all there for desktop usage. The big problem is the lack of applications, and the biggest app I use is office, so OO is the first annoyance I run into. After a couple weeks, I switch back. It’s been six months or so since my last attempt.
I do a lot with .doc files and word processing in general, and OO is perfect for my needs. Works came with my laptop so cost really isn’t an issue for me: OO is my choice because having to work in Windows cuts my productivity to shreds. This is tangental to OO itself, but it’s an important consideration.
There are a few issues with OO that I can’t seem to resolve. For example, I can’t make nested lists with the second-level list on the same line as the first level, like this:
1. Foo
2. a. Bar
b. Baz
c. Bat
3. Quux
I honestly don’t know if you can do this in Word, either, but I know I can do it in LaTeX, for example. (I don’t know LaTeX well enough to make it my primary format, and I’d need to convert most of the documents over to .doc anyway for emailing.) Most of the time, though, OO does precisely what I want with no handholding (at least, no handholding that tries to lead me in the wrong direction).
OO might not be for everyone, but I really like it.
I use OO and Easy Office. The only times I have problems with Word is with some of the fanciest formats (like shading) which I have used… uh… twice in 15 years of writing with computers? Ok, maybe 3 times. That and when someone has embedded a picture into the document; depending on how they’ve done it it gets funked up.
I use OpenOffice every working day, and I love it. Bill H. is right, it’s not fully compatible with word.
Embedded animations in Word documents have problems.
Macros will not transfer between the two.
Heavily modified tables tend to shift on conversion (first or last column will start off-screen).
Those are examples I can think of off the top of my head.
These are not as bad as they sound. The only people I’ve actually met with animation in the document were sales related. I don’t know anyone who uses macros (which doesn’t mean they aren’t used, just that I’ve yet to see one).
Tables can be re-aligned. This one sucks.
Since most of my documents go to customers, I deliver .pdf for final drafts so the table thing isn’t a real problem. If they want an editable copy, I send them the OpenOffice file or take a few minutes on a computer with Word and check it over.
Give it a shot and see for yourself. It won’t cost you anything. Some things will be in slightly different places than you are used to, but the functionality is there. It’s a damned fine product.
I’ve sent OO files to others many times with no problems and likewise received Word files equally easily. I do copyediting so these files included extensive “track changes” formatting. I always save my files as Word 97 .doc, NEVER as the OO file format (can’t remember the extension). I’ve also had no trouble sending and receiving spreadsheets.
So, I’m pretty frickin happy with it. (I use Sun Microsystems OpenOffice 1.1.2)
I use StarOffice version 7 - I don’t know what OO version that refers to. I’ve never had a problem with Word files or spreadsheets. Version 5.2 did not handle complicated PowerPoint presentations very well, but that has been improved tremendously. Still needs to be checked, but it is seldom an issue.
Macros, on the other hand, don’t transfer at all. I’m a big macro user, and there are a lot of non-obvious things.
I also use Word, and Word is getting more and more of a pain to use. I really much prefer Word97 to Word XP. MS is bloating it even worse with all these fancy collaboration features that few people ever use. I find them a pain to ignore. OO made a design decision to stay relatively simple, and I think it is the right one.
I work in a Solaris shop, so all my interactions with people from outside are using exported or imported .doc files, and I’ve never had a problem.
I’m currently using OOo 1.1.3 on an Ubuntu Linux 5.04 system. I write maybe ten to twenty pages of a week, saved as .doc files, that get shared with the rest of the office. None of them have ever mentioned any formatting problems, and 95% of them are using MS Office 97 or 2000.
Spreadsheets, on the other hand, might be an entirely different ball game. The half dozen times I’ve had occasion to use Excel/OO-Calc, I didn’t notice anything amiss. YMMV.
By the way, for something graphics-intensive that doesn’t need to be collaboratively edited, a PDF is almost always better than a DOC,* and OO takes care of this nicely by including an “export to PDF” button right there on the main toolbar. Sweet.
Except for when you should be using HTML. Or plain text. Really.
As far as I can tell, the Windows version of OO has a faster startup time than the Linux version, but you are still going to be looking at 3x the time it took to load MSOffice.
This is very irritating for me because half of the time that I open up Word, it is to use the spell checker. It needs to be quick… not 45 seconds.
There’s something you can install or activate to make it load faster. Some kind of init, I think (are they even called that anymore? the little icons at the bottom right). I know this, because I had to uninstall it because my wheezy old steam-powered computer was freaking out due to the “load-me-faster” device. A knowledgable computer friend fixed it for me, so I know neither what it was nor how he removed it, but I do know OO used to load quickly and now it loads slowly. But my computer remains crash free.
(just to give you an idea hw slow my computer is, RollerCoaster Tycoon (1) has been known to crash it, if enough people are in the park).
This is a you-only thing, I suspect. I just timed opening OO on my 1.2ghz XP laptop - 8 seconds from doubleclick to typing the first character. I havent timed it under Linux but it’s comparable. Maybe you need to reinstall OO or go to a newer version.