Can Open Office open any Microsoft office document

[Guest]

I write VERY comprihensive documents

[Michael A. Kearsley]

You might also ask yourself - can Microsoft Office open any Microsoft Office document, such as MS Publisher 2000 being unable to open Publisher 97 documents (at least when I tried) despite Publisher 97 being able to open them. I've also heard of instances of Word documents that couldn't be opened by later versions of Word.

[DannyB]

OOo does a pretty good job of opening many MS Office documents. OOo is, in fact, the most compatible program that I am aware of.

That being said, nothing is ever going to be 100% compatible with MS Office, except for MS Office. And as the previous poster points out, even that is likely to be less than 100%.
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[Guest]

[Michael A. Kearsley]

I mean't Microsoft Office as in the Microsoft Office products rather than attempting to go through all of them as as well as the commonly known ones there are also the ones in the broader family as Microsoft likes to refer to them.

[esperantisto]

One more point (in fact, already mentioned many times). OOo (and SO) can open damaged MS Word documents, which Word itself cannot! I faced quite many cases, when large Word documents got damaged after sending by email or copying / moving over network drives, and Word crashed on attempt to open such documents. At the same time, OOo opened them with only distorting tables and - if the documents were in Belarusian or Russian - dropping the Cyrillic letter "Ya". In one or two cases there was only one copy of a document, and OOo was the only salvation - thousand thanks to the developers of this wonderful program!

[The Liquidator]

OOo can open MS Office documents i.e Word, Excel and powerpoint, and display them pretty well. However, if there is extensive use of Macros then you can encounter difficulties. Also if the documents have been protected with a password you won't be able to open them. StarOffice has some additional (commercial) filters which expands the list of document types a bit.

OOo is a good example of what can be done despite attempts by MS make sure you can't use anything else. It's not perfect, however, in this respect and I don't suppose it ever can be.

Ian

[dolphyo]

As a matter of fact: it seems OO can not open Microsoft Works text documents. I, a little speedily, bought a new computer without Office or Word, but with Works. Writing program there is a simple version of Word. Documents have to be saved as RTF first before OO can open those. Maybe in a next version this could be amended. Still, I'm happy to have found a program which forestalls the need of spending loads of money on Word by itself.

[The Liquidator]

I don't think much work has been or will be done on Works filters. StarOffice has them but they are proprietory so OOo users don't get them. Besides they are out of date.

Interestingly, I 'm not sure that even MS Office has filters for Works.

Ian

[dolphyo]

[Michael A. Kearsley]

Hardly anything can open Microsoft Works files and really given that the applications support Word, Excel, Powerpoint and dbase formats why on earth they don't just drop the Works file formats is beyond me, after all it's not as if Works actually has any special features that need their own file formats to support. Even for Word the filters for the Microsoft Works Wordprocessor have to be downloaded seperately along with filters for things such as Wordperfect and Works 6.0 Wordprocessor filter is actually a seperate download (Given that Microsoft Word is now supplied usually as part of Microsoft Works it seems strange that Microsoft continue with the Works Wordprocessor).

[Michael A. Kearsley]

Proprietary isn't really the word - I think obscure and quaint are more appropriate words really.