OpenOffice vs MS-Office?

[walterbyrd]

As I see it, OpenOffice has the following advantages: cost, multi-platform, more file formats. Whereas MS-Office open faster, has more features, works better with OOXML files, has more documention, and is the accepted standard.

Whether the ribbon is an advantage, or disadvantage for ms-office, I suppose, is a matter of personal preference. I don't care for the ribbon myself.

Am I wrong about anything, or am I missing anything.

[heimannm]

I am preferring OpenOffice against MS-Office.
OpenOffice is very reliable, easy to convert facility and much more advantages.


Moderation probe1: your signature is SPAM and therefor was deleted by me

[jrkrideau]

[Ed]

You have missed the fact that OOo has full built-in support for the ISO standard ODF file formats, and even uses them as its native format. MS Office's support for ODF formats, on the other hand, is extremely poor.

[floris_v]

[HWL]

My employment requires that I be proficient in Excel and OO since we have hundreds, perhaps thousands of users utilizing both programs. Here are the pros and cons:

EXCEL
pros:
de facto format
better filtering mechinism
better sorting mechinism
macros run

cons:
cost/licensure per unit
lack of to pdf feature as standard
poor or nonexistent ability to open .ods format
older versions can't open .xlsx

OO
pros:
FREE
able to open .xls .ods. xlsx

cons:
can't run Excel macros (unless you buy the proprietary developments)
poor filtering mech
poor sorting mech
defaulted to weird delete options list (can be changed through settings)
cannot handle wildcards unless reg express enabled and will not stay enabled when opening .xls files.

So, when Sunsystems and others began to further develop OO and charge for it, the original developers wanted to remain free and began working on LibreOffice, based on the OO platform (see http://libreoffice.org).

I have found Libre solves the filtering, sorting and most of all basic running of macros issue.

I am urging my OO users to move to LibreOffice.

No, I don't work for or get any compensation from Libre -- I just like it.

[Ed]

[HWL]

[Ed]

[philb1]

I've just had my first experience of Excel in Office 97. I hope Calc doesn't change to the ribbon thingy. I been playing with Excel for a good few hours & I can only say that I think Calc is laid out better & much easier to navigate through. Excel looks like it's got a lot of features for creating formulas. I like the charts Excel produces, nice eye candy. But overall it seems to me that a lot of things in Excel are buried in sub menus, more-so than Calc. At the end of the day, it's what you're used to I suppose. I did find that Excel doesn't play nicely with the xlsx files saved from Calc. That's a disaster. It doesn't even like xls files from Calc. Things like formatting & conditional formatting don't carry through well. Calc on the other hand opens files from Excel with ease.
I'll stick with Calc. I used to use OOO3.3, but it was forever not responding, crashing & having to have files recovered. I switched to Libreoffice 3.4. Much more responsive & stable. On W7 if that's useful to someone..

[numbernine619]

i m using open office from last 3 years it is running well but some of the things it had gave me problem like when we enter any numeric digits contain .(dot) that will automatically convert in any other words. i don't know why.

[winusne20]

You have missed the fact that OOo has full built-in support for the ISO standard ODF file formats, and even uses them as its native format. MS Office's support for ODF formats, on the other hand, is extremely poor.

[esperantisto]

So what? Face the reality: ODF has not gained any significance so far. And MS Office formats are still prevailing.
_________________
AOO 3.4.1, LibO 4.0 / Windows 7 & openSUSE Linux 11.3, 12.2

[Villeroy]

[jrkrideau]