I had notification of a Java updare today, and was offered "Open Office" download free of charge.

I accepted the download.

I've been wondering if anyone on here uses it, and how, particular it compares with Microsoft Office.

I have had, and used Microsoft Works 2002 for ages. These days I only use it for creating PDF Documents for the Writing Group.

My time constructing Databases and Diaries etc petered out when I reached retirement age. :)

It'll take me a while to suss Open Office out.

What's your views re Open Office? I'm self-taught in these Office programmmes.

Also, are there any adds-on you could recommend.

Thanks in advance for any pointers offered.

I had notification of a Java updare today, and was offered "Open Office" download free of charge.

I accepted the download.

I've been wondering if anyone on here uses it, and how, particular it compares with Microsoft Office.

I have had, and used Microsoft Works 2002 for ages. These days I only use it for creating PDF Documents for the Writing Group.

My time constructing Databases and Diaries etc petered out when I reached retirement age. :)

It'll take me a while to suss Open Office out.

What's your views re Open Office? I'm self-taught in these Office programmmes.

Also, are there any adds-on you could recommend.

Thanks in advance for any pointers offered.

For free, it's fantastic.

I actually bought office 2007 (legit, but cheap!), so I don't use OO anymore, but it certainly did the job at the time.

I use Open Office, and I think its good.

I've not found anything that Microsoft Office does that Open Office doesn't do.

I've also had no problems reading and writing Word documents with it.

For some completely bizarre reason last year the new PCs at work had open Office installed on them because our head office IT department were too cheapskate to dip their hands in their pockets.....

....it was the worst 5 months of my film scheduling life! I hated the software and the more I had to use it the more frustrated I became. I found it to be worth every penny it costs and ended up doing most of my work at home on my own PC. My Monday shifts went from 4 or 5 hours days to 8 or 9.

After kicking up a storm quite a few times (especially when files compiled and formatted in Word as templates by head office were unusable for some bizarre reason in OO as it reformatted the spacings for no known reason - or when we saved files from OO in supposed Word format so that head office and regional management could access them and they simply didn't work) our IT support finally agreed to put their hands in their pockets for a license for MS Office (I think it was when the Regional Managers threatened to force all of Head Office to use OO that they paid out). Life has been so much easier since.

If you have MS Office software, use that. Open Office is useful if you have nothing else, but worth every penny it costs.

Many thanks for the replies to-date folks.

I'll be experimenting with it over the 2 or 3 weeks for different tasks and see how things go. :thumbsup:

Open Office is great for your everyday Word type stuff, and its free!

A very good alternative to MS Office, once you get used to it and worth every penny :)



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For private use, OO is fantastic. As a package it can do pretty much everything I could imagine a home user would want to do. So why pay loads to do same thing you can do for free (legally ;) ).

Far as I am concerned the only reason to pay for MS Office would be to guarantee compatibility with other folks, but I've never had an issue with compatibility while using the more recent versions of OO.

Can anyone think of another office package that works well with microsoft's?

OO is pretty impressive - i use it alot, although i do struggle to break free of MS Excel.

Sadly, if you need to be MS Office compatible, use MS Office. Its a sorry state of affairs when the best reason to use a piece of software is "because thats what everyone else uses" but there you go...

And there is the enhanced version of OpenOffice - OxygenOffice Professional (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop) Mustn't forget Lotus Symphony (http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa) and the Java based on-line ThinkFree Office (http://member.thinkfree.com/) :)

google docs ;-)

Just a note to let the posters here know that I have been tracking the thread.

I didn't just disappear.

Your input is appreciated. :thumbsup: