Opinion on Open Office – good or bad? (n/a)

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I would like an opinion on the open office suite http://www.openoffice.org/%5B/url%5D and whether it is better then ms office.

Do l have to keep checking it regualrly for updates as it is open source like mozilla.org, http://www.mozilla.org/%5B/url%5Das it may contain builds that have bug fixes?
Which is what someone told me.

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OpenOffice is a good office suite, it is not as comprehensive as MS Office but it will probably fit most peoples needs. The best way to see if you like it is to try it out, if you don’t like it you have not lost anything and can delete it.

There are usually updates every few months but at the moment you need to download the full suite every time there is an update. For Windows this is around 90MB which is similar size to a full service pack for MS Office.

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Thanks for that information, much appreciated.

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The OpenOffice.org suite is “just as good” for most people as Microsoft or Corel for most purposes. That said, I hardly use it at all. Some thoughts:

• If you already own and are familiar with one of the three, it’s hard to justify switching.
• I have read that the Calc program does not have all of the features of Excel that more advanced users may require.
• As I haven’t sat down for three days to integrate OpenOffice.org to our document management system (assuming it can be done with the built-in macro language), I really only use Writer for opening problem DOC files or reading protected VBA modules.
• The presentation-to-PDF converter is useful (although some features of PPT files don’t work or work a bit differently).
  [/list]Maybe that helps?

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Thanks for that feedback.

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Having installed Open Office today, I can report that Writer cannot view protected VBA in at least one template in a 3rd party product.

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Unless they have changed openoffice, I did not like the fact that it did not have a ‘format painter’. I use it a lot and with openoffice you had to use styles which for me was not as quick or painless as Format Painter.

However, if they have that now, I would highly recommend the suite for most people’s needs. Plus it is FREE!!

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A Format Paintbrush tool has been included since OpenOffice 2.0

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Thank you, now everyone knows that I am behind the curve……
I guess its time to look at it again…

Thanks again for the update

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I use MS Office at work as it is part of our company’s SOE and the company pays for it.

I use OpenOffice at home because I don’t have to pay for it and I only need limited features, that is not to say the features are limited just that I don’t use them.

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