Good bye MS Office Hello Open Office

[pprince]

I decided yesterday to take advantage of the Thanksgiving down time by installing Open Office and Thunderbird email.

They really are good products and I will be uninstalling MS Office and Outlook.

[gotstang]

Way to go! I did that back in 2007 when PowerPoint 2007 came out and I couldn't figure the damn thing out. The good old fashioned interface didn't need improving, IMO.

[MedievaL]

I've been using Thunderbird on my computers at home for a couple of years and have no issues with it. I like it.

[65Fastback434]

Well, I currently run both Open Office 3.1 (on my Linux Laptop) and MS Office 2007 on my (Windows Laptop). As much as I am for open source, I cannot stand open office, it is way behind the development of MS Office. The funtionality is not always there, especially in Open Office Impress (The powerpoint competitor), I have to read a lot of power point documents and everyone is making them in office 07 now in the pptx format and Impress just rips them apart.

But one tip I have to you, since you are now using open office, when you plan to send a document to someone else who may not be running open office, save the document as a PDF, that way when they open it all the formatting will be exactly the same. I have had problems in the past where I spend lots of time fixing the formatting in my Open Office Document just to have it look like crap when someone opens it with Word.

[mikemstang66]

Originally Posted by 65fastback434

well, i currently run both open office 3.1 (on my linux laptop) and ms office 2007 on my (windows laptop). As much as i am for open source, i cannot stand open office, it is way behind the development of ms office. The funtionality is not always there, especially in open office impress (the powerpoint competitor), i have to read a lot of power point documents and everyone is making them in office 07 now in the pptx format and impress just rips them apart.

But one tip i have to you, since you are now using open office, when you plan to send a document to someone else who may not be running open office, save the document as a pdf, that way when they open it all the formatting will be exactly the same. I have had problems in the past where i spend lots of time fixing the formatting in my open office document just to have it look like crap when someone opens it with word.

very good advise

[pprince]

That sounds like good advice.

I don't send Word documents for others to view. I either send PDF's or hard copy so I hope I will be fine with Open Office.

Open Office opens and displays my vehicle appraisals just fine and has a native export to PDF.