Over the weekend, I had to download about 10 different documents written is Microsoft Office 2003 or earlier. Because I really want to move away from Windows and stay Linux only, I said to myself; “Self – Let’s use OpenOffice to open all of these documents, fill out what needs to be filled out, save, print, and e-mail them to the correct recipients.”
So I downloaded all 10 documents, saved them into a folder on the Desktop, and then used OpenOffice to to read them. Now comes the problem, each document opened, and I could see all the text, and logos, but each document had tables. The tables were setup in a form format, and they were a mess. I then said; “There is no way these documents are supposed to look like this.” I tried to modify the tables and set cell the way it should be. But I don’t know how they should look. So I had to save the documents to my XP partition and reboot to Windows.
So now I am back in XP, I open each document with Microsoft Office 2007, and the documents look 100% better!! All the cells are aligned correctly, even documents that I opened in OpenOffice which were two pages long, were actually only one page in Office 2007.
I completed my work in Office 2007, printed and saved and rebooted into Ubuntu 9.04. I copied each document back from the XP partition, into a new sub-folder on my Desktop, and then opened each in OpenOffice. And each document still looked like a mess, but now the mess had my information in each field.
I’m not sure why Open Office was giving me a hard time about documents with tables. To me, this is ridiculous, how can anyone expect OpenOffice to be a replacement for Microsoft Office when it can’t open documents with tables? I’m going to search the Internet for some answers, maybe even post in Ubuntu Forums. You can give Microsoft all the grief you want about Vista, but in my opinion, Microsoft Office is still the best. If Microsoft would build a version to run native in Linux, I would purchase it today, or yesterday when I needed it.
ratedmaxpower 
6 replies on “Complaints About OpenOffice”
[…] I was going back through my blog and remember an entry I made about Microsoft Office being available… […]
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I AM USING OOo-dev 3.3 but in this “page set up” is not available please solve this problem (in microsoft word we having using is change page set any type & seperate pagesetup option is there)
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Rajesh,
I’m not sure what you mean “page set up” is not available. I would suggest looking into the forums at http://www.oooforum.org/. They might be able to resolve the issue you are having.
Good Luck!
— George
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I downloaded Open Office 3.0 – a big mistake. It will not work as a professional tool. When I attempted to uninstall the program, it will not allow removal. I searched Google for an answer and found many were having the same problem. Do not download this program, you will save money and loose everything.
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With Open Office 3.0, I had problems. I have switch to LibreOffice 3.2 for Linux Mint 10 and Ubuntu. Although somethings are still rough when it comes to 100% MS Office compatibility, I am pleased with LibreOffice 3.2.
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The Open Office / Office Libre “font embedding” saga.
http://tinyurl.com/3oyjeuo
What they say:
http://why.openoffice.org/
Enterprises from corner-shops to corporate giants are turning to OpenOffice.org 3 to power their businesses. The flexible word processor, powerful spreadsheet, dynamic graphics, database access and more meet all the requirements for an office software package.
A completely open development process means that anyone can report bugs, request new features, or enhance the software.
The result: OpenOffice.org 3 does everything you want your office software to do, the way you want it to.
What you really get:
It doesn’t SAVE the work with the fonts that you want use. You can’t enhance the software to make it do this, and it doesn’t do what you want it to… which is to embed the fonts that you want to use in your own documents.
What they say:
http://why.openoffice.org/why_gov.html
Data is safe.
Freedom of Information Acts require that the documents you create today will be accessible years in the future.
What you really get:
The documents that you create WILL NOT BE accessable in years to come.
If the fonts are not embedded at the time of production, then they sure as shit are not going to be there when you do reopen them many years into the future.
What they say:
http://why.openoffice.org/why_sme.html
The no-hassle answer For small businesses, IT is a hassle and an expense. OpenOffice.org 3 is simply the easiest and cheapest way of providing the essential software tools required to support a growing business. Developed over twenty years, OpenOffice.org is a mature, stable, product, guaranteeing trouble-free usage. Behind the scenes, it stores all your valuable data in a format approved by the International Organization for Standardization – the first software package in the world to meet this exacting standard.
As more companies adopt the standard, exchanging data between office software will become as easy as saving and opening a file – a system integrator’s dream.
What you really get:
“Open Office” DOES NOT store ALL of your DATA… and
You CANNOT freely exchange, save and open the Open Office files – because the FONTS, THAT YOU WANT TO USE IN THEM, which ARE the actual FORMATTING AND LAYOUT – are not embedded either.
What they say:
http://why.openoffice.org/why_oem.html
Open for business OpenOffice.org 3 prides itself on its compatibility with other office software, both in the way it works and in the files it uses.
So offering OpenOffice.org 3 doesn’t close off options for your clients – in fact, it opens up new opportunities for them
What you really get:
The lack of FONT embedding closes off a LOT of options for your clients.
In fact not only will it close off a LOT of options, it will completely WIPE and RUIN your clients documents entirely.
Read up on the article here:
http://tinyurl.com/3oyjeuo
.
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