Considering open office, any hassles?

Life Technology
1

I’m considering open office for my gaming machine(old) has any one had any good or bad experiences with it. I know it’s kind of hard to argue with the price(free) though. Basically I need it for spreadsheets for calc of lists.

Thanks,
Okami

2

Works fine, I use calc (spreadsheet) the most …

3

I’ve had no problems using OpenOffice Writer, which is very similar to Word. It runs a little slowly on my netbook but that is to be expected.

4

You can also try Google Docs, if you’re looking for free software. It works well if you’re collaborating with others. However if it’s just for you, then Open Office probably has more features.

5

I get numerous (about once every 5 mins) warnings on my office computer from Macafee telling me about two worms in my open office word program. Nothing seems to have happened to the computer, though.

6

I have trend micro AV and don’t get those messages

7

Macros are somewhat more difficult to create in Open Office than in Word.

Open Office, however, has always been a wonderfully reliable substitute when Word decides not to function properly. A co-worker of mine uses it full-time with few probs. I’d use it full-time too if I could find a way to import my massive Word auto-correct file (which I’ve spent four years building) into it.

8

I’ve been using it for a year. The only problem I’ve had with it is opening and saving files as a Word file then opening on a different PC with Word only (and vice versa). The docs get a bit messed up.

9

I’ve used OpenOffice for quite a many years now. The only complaints are these:

  • It only covers word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and a couple of other small components. It doesn’t cover some possibly important Office components, e.g. Outlook.
  • It can take longer and use up more memory to load than Office. This is probably less noticeable on a powerful machine.

One feature I rather enjoy is its built-in capability to export to PDF. The resultant files have always looked great and opened on all PDF readers.

10

This relates to the biggest reason I’ve started using Open Office: there’s a Portable App version. I carry the documents AND Open Office around on a thumb drive, and then whatever computer I’m using, I can just use my own version of Open Office (& Firefox) without bothering with countless different preferences - and I can get English menus, too.

How valuable this is depends on your situation. I teach in a whole bunch of different classrooms with many different computers, so for me this is great.

(Of course, the thumb drive needs to be scanned and cleaned of viruses quite regularly. I also back the whole thing up every couple of days.)

11

Yep. Try out the latest versions of the USB version of the program, that way you don’t have to mess around much with the installation.

I’ve used Ooo since early Versions of 2.0 and I like where it is going. It’s not quite as 100% useful as Word, but that’s because I just don’t know where things are yet… But it’s cross platform and well supported.

Also, if you don’t like formatting changing, use the ODF formats when you save, not the Word formats… otherwise formatting jumps around terribly with complex documents.

Kenneth