Author Topic: Open Office: is it poo?  (Read 15949 times)

FatBloke

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Open Office: is it poo?
« on: 18 February, 2009, 02:32:38 pm »
In an attempt so avoid having to buy MS Office for my daughter's laptop as the poor dear has been struggling with Microshaft Works for the past year or so :-\

So, I downloaded Open Office only to find that it can't open Microshaft Works .wps files.

Open Office is poo!

Unless, dear reader, you have any advice. :-\
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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #1 on: 18 February, 2009, 02:37:13 pm »
I think you'll find that Works is poo, not openoffice.

Hope that helps.

Jules

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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #2 on: 18 February, 2009, 02:40:22 pm »
Yup - I can't really see anyone making much of an effort to support Works. I thought it had been dead for years.


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FatBloke

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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #3 on: 18 February, 2009, 02:41:32 pm »
I think you'll find that Works is poo, not openoffice.
I was fully aware of that, hence the move to OO.

Looks like I'll be uninstalling OO and popping down to PCWorld with me credit card!  >:(
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ed_o_brain

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #4 on: 18 February, 2009, 02:42:59 pm »
I think you'll find that Works is poo, not openoffice.
I was fully aware of that, hence the move to OO.

Looks like I'll be uninstalling OO and popping down to PCWorld with me credit card!  >:(

As she is a Stoooodent, she should be able to get the Student and Teacher edition of Office which is cheaper and has lots of stoodenty type software thrown in.

Check otu details online before you go...

Pingu

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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #5 on: 18 February, 2009, 02:43:16 pm »
Can you send the Works file to someone with Office who could import & save it as an Office file (.xls, .doc or whatever)? You could then open the Office file with Open Office.

vorsprung

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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #6 on: 18 February, 2009, 02:44:06 pm »
I goggled for "Microsoft Works .wps"
and apparently there is a free online conversion service for these files to odt

chris

  • (aka chris)
Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #7 on: 18 February, 2009, 02:44:18 pm »
Could you save your works files as .DOCs .XLTs etc, then open them in OO?

Just a thought, and possibly a bit time consuming. No idea if would work.

Craig

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #8 on: 18 February, 2009, 02:46:59 pm »
Or get Go-OO: Your Office Suite
Its an improved / patched version of OpenOffice, and includes support for importing MS Works files (plus quite a few other extra features).

andygates

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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #9 on: 18 February, 2009, 02:49:25 pm »
From Expert-Sexchange: "For wps text files which you specified in the title, this from FILExt - The File Extension Source - Some versions of Word will open some versions of these Works files; for others a converter may be needed. One is available as the file WP6RTF.EXE from Microsoft. Go to the Microsoft Office main site and search using the words "works to word converter" (without the quotes) and various locations for older converters no longer available should pop up. Once you convert to doc, Open Office should be able to open them, otherwise save them as text files (txt) with works. Then anything will open them."
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rae

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #10 on: 18 February, 2009, 02:53:28 pm »
If all of her friends and teachers use OO, then it will be fine.

If they use office, then they will see random formatting errors on some documents when they read them.   Eventually she will get bored of getting told off for screwing up her tables, and beg you to buy a student copy of office.

FatBloke

  • I come from a land up over!
Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #11 on: 18 February, 2009, 02:56:36 pm »
If all of her friends and teachers use OO, then it will be fine.

If they use office, then they will see random formatting errors on some documents when they read them.   Eventually she will get bored of getting told off for screwing up her tables, and beg you to buy a student copy of office.
MS Office it will have to be.   >:(
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chris

  • (aka chris)
Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #12 on: 18 February, 2009, 03:00:39 pm »
If all of her friends and teachers use OO, then it will be fine.

If they use office, then they will see random formatting errors on some documents when they read them.   Eventually she will get bored of getting told off for screwing up her tables, and beg you to buy a student copy of office.
MS Office it will have to be.   >:(

yellow-ceitidh uses OO for all her skoolwurk and doesn't get any stick from her teachers (and most of them use MS Office).

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #13 on: 18 February, 2009, 03:04:52 pm »
As a proof reader/editor, I find OO a bit clunkier than Word, but I look at the price tag and smile...
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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #14 on: 18 February, 2009, 03:42:47 pm »
I open MS files via Ubuntu Linux, and the Open Office Programme and save them as Open Office files.
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vorsprung

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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #15 on: 18 February, 2009, 04:07:48 pm »
If all of her friends and teachers use OO, then it will be fine.

If they use office, then they will see random formatting errors on some documents when they read them.   Eventually she will get bored of getting told off for screwing up her tables, and beg you to buy a student copy of office.

Er surely the same is true of any differing installs of MS Office.  If it is a different version or the fonts are different or the phases of the moon are different then the layout gets screwed up.

OO doesn't seem any better or worse for this

Valiant

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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #16 on: 18 February, 2009, 06:31:06 pm »
Even office struggles with Works files :p
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tonycollinet

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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #17 on: 18 February, 2009, 06:57:00 pm »
I would go for OO these days

However - if you must have ms, then home/student edition can be had for £60 which buys you the right to install on up to 3 machines - which is not bad.
Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition (3 User Licence) (PC): Microsoft: Amazon.co.uk: Software

Or there are student only versions available at around £40 for 2 pc's

   Software4Students.co.uk: Microsoft Office 2007 Standard edition, microsoft software


rae

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #18 on: 18 February, 2009, 07:04:30 pm »
Quote
Er surely the same is true of any differing installs of MS Office.  If it is a different version or the fonts are different or the phases of the moon are different then the layout gets screwed up. 

This used to be the case, I haven't noticed it for a number of years now.   Microsoft have got pretty good at compatability packs. 

I haven't used OO in a while (a year or so), but it utterly hosed a big Word document that I tested it with.  To be fair, most of the word stuff was OK.   Power point was hopeless.   The lack of bomb proof VBA makes Excel a bit useless as well. 

Valiant

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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #19 on: 18 February, 2009, 07:15:14 pm »
Mac or Windows?
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rogerzilla

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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #20 on: 18 February, 2009, 07:20:46 pm »
Works is just a way to get Word, with a load of crap thrown in.
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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #21 on: 18 February, 2009, 07:31:24 pm »
OO Can be made to save files as .doc/.xls etc by default which does help when transferring files to PCs with MS Office on  :thumbsup:

Oaky

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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #22 on: 18 February, 2009, 07:42:33 pm »
If all of her friends and teachers use OO, then it will be fine.

If they use office, then they will see random formatting errors on some documents when they read them.   Eventually she will get bored of getting told off for screwing up her tables, and beg you to buy a student copy of office.

Random formating errors are part and parcel of MS Office's normal modus operandi anyway (e.g. documents on-screen will format/paginate differently depending on which printer drivers you have installed). granted that with OO, they will also see some additional ones that are the result of MS's lack of documentation for their proprietary formats.

If people care about the layout and formatting they need to use a proper typesetting engine and an output format that preserves layout (DVI, PS, PDF etc.)
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Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #23 on: 18 February, 2009, 07:54:51 pm »
Stick with OpenOffice. I'm convinced that, 5 or 10 years from now, OpenOffice will be the standard, and you won't dare email anyone files generated in MS Office, for fear of the formatting being screwed up... Well, I hope so, anyway, because I hate to see people paying for inferior software because "it's what everyone else uses".  ::-)

inc

Re: Open Office: is it poo?
« Reply #24 on: 18 February, 2009, 07:55:12 pm »
No it is not poo, far from it. There has been an ongoing saga with plenty of bribery and corruption by MS of national standards organisations so MS can get it's "open" OOXML file format approved by ISO because the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that closed file formats such as .wps are at the mercy of MS. Whatever you do don't continue with MS crap, OO uses ODF ( an ISO standard) which can be opened by the latest MS Office. OO will do anything MS Office can do and will save, if required in MS formats. I have hundreds of .doc and .xls documents all of which converted to .odf without problems. IBM also do a free office suite ( based on OO ) IBM Lotus Symphony