Open office worth it?

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I wonder if It is worth to download openoffice if I already have microsoft's office. So any thought?

 

OpenOffice is good, but the strength of Micro$oft Office is its compatibility (especially with spreadsheets). For spreadsheet work, I often found myself having to use Office exclusively, as there was a very finite amount of data that OpenOffice could import from the M$ format used at college. For general word processing and other tedious monkey-work I find OpenOffice to be much better, though, because of its far lower memory requirements (hence, pacier operation) and greater customisability & user-friendliness.

That, and Clippit is the spawn of beelzebub.

 

Hey... Errr, I've install Openoffice french and uh the thing that correct the spelling mistakes doesn't work. With purpose I make mistake and open office doesn't recognize it. And I can't find the original word. Bummer.

 

I use open office only because I can't get my hands on a copy of MS Office, and I'm too cheap to actually buy it myself. The program is okay.

 

It is free, that alone should make it worth downloading. Especially the recently released OpenOffice 2.0 is awesome.

 

Compatibility isn't Word's sole right, you know. Even it can save in XML and XML is an open format (and the standard of OpenOffice). Since I tested the program not very long ago, I can say it is a solid option for a casual user due of three reasons: 1) it costs nothing, 2) it has everything Word has plus more, and 3) you support Open Source instead of a greedy US company.

Yet, I did have some gripes with it. First, it doesn't allow you to automatically add page-numbers. In Word it's just two clicks away, but I didn't see the option anywhere in OOo. Second, it does not have an option to add page-borders. Since I absolutely needed these two options for my work for my site, I had to go back to my h4xx0red Word.

 

Thanks for the heads-up, Erod! I've been downloading for the past 2 1/2 hours, and only 2 more hours to go!

This better be worth it!

 

Page numbers can be added via Insert -> Field (-> Other...). I am not entirely sure what you mean with page-borders, but there are border options for several uses. The help file is always useful, you should use it if you cannot find some option.

 

I tried OO 1.1 a couple of years ago, and hated it. Decided to give OO another shot when 2.0 was released. Now I can never go back to M$ Office.

Compatibility wise, I've had some hilarious experiences with M$. We've got both PCs and Macs in the lab, the PCs have Office 2003 and the Macs have Office 2004. Save a file on Mac, and try and open it on the PC. Or save a file on the PC then try to open it on the Mac. It NEVER works! (that's with the latest updates too)

Ironically enough, if I create a file with OO at home, save it was a M$ Office format, then take it to the lab, it flawlessly opens on either system.

Now, who was saying that M$'s strength was compatibility?

 

@ Erod

To ALL pages with one click and as easily defined where they belong? (top, bottom + left, right, center.) I did find that option, but IIRC; it was limited to one page at a time. I need to work with 600+ pages every week, so unless it does it automatically, I can't use it.

What I meant with the page-borders is just that: borders in every page that are X cm from the end of the paper. In Word, this is done via format -> Borders and shading -> Page border -> box -> ok.

 

You need to create a header/footer and place it there. As for the borders, Format -> Page... -> Borders (I do not have MS Office so I cannot check what you said)?

 

what do I do with my spelling checker problem? Commit suicide?

 

Nah, that's a little over the top. Besides, only the twin deities of Bill Gates & Intel accept human sacrifice, or so I hear.

You should be able to download a French dictionary from OpenOffice.org, if it isn't automatically part of the French version. If you can't find it, just try e-mailing someone there. I'm pretty sure I had a German dictionary for OpenOffice so I could spellcheck my coursework.

@Wirhe: in theory, yes, I could have saved everything as XML tables. However, when working on a Final year research project with a partner who stubbornly refuses to mess about with alternative file formats, it's somewhat trickier. It also seemed impossible to import the graphs properly in XML, leading to a whole stack of problems. OOo 1.1 was good (especially when you consider it's free) but for interfacing correctly with M$ stuff, its spreadsheet wasn't 100%. Everything else worked just dandy though; my presentations in particular were beauts, as they were the only ones in my class not to have a boring PowerPoint default background.

 

I use open office because it is free and I have no issues with it yet. I do know they are in the work of Open Office 3.0.

 

You can also save(create) to .pdf - works really nice

 

Found a french dictionary, Kinda annoying to manualy download each language. Can't I import my M$'s one into open office?