Open Office and Microsoft Office Files

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On Thursday 20 July 2006 10:55 pm, Greg Rundlett wrote:
> You can certainly open, edit, save and/or create files in Microsoft
> document formats using OpenOffice applications.  For those who want to
> use OpenOffice software but work primarily with Microsoft formats, you
> can even set the default 'save' format to be one of Microsofts
> formats.
>
> There are a couple benefits. You won't get complaints from other users
> who don't know how to install software on their computer.  Meanwhile
> (assuming you are new to OpenOffice) you get familiar with the
> OpenOffice applications.
When I wrote my 32-bit to 64-bit whitepaper a few years ago I had imported 
custom templates that did not render well in OpenOffice at the time so I 
used Microsoft Word 2000 under CXOffice. But, a few months later a coworker 
started a project to write a Solaris to Linux porting guide, and that was 
done 100% under Open Office (by this time 2.0 had been released). This had 
similar custom templates that I had. Additionally, while teaching at 
Northeastern, I used OpenOffice exclusively for my classroom presentations 
and would save them in html, .doc, and .sx? for my students. Subsequently 
when the PDF capability was added I simply rendered them into a PDF. But, I 
have always had the cabability to write .doc, .ppd, .xls from 
OpenOffice.org since it was released and even in Star Office before that, 
so I know that we've always had that compatibility. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
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