OpenOffice

[Mzee]

Hello All
Read good media reports on OpenOffice and visited OpenOffice.org.

I have an opportunity to switch from MSOffice in my upcoming upgrade and start afresh

It would be nice to hear from some real users, any views or issues.

Used to use OExpress but have to use Outlook now for it's Networking support (ie being able to access the office server), are there any issues of continuing to use it on occasions with OpenOffice?

Just a thought - can Outlook (alone) be reinstalled from the MSOffice disk without having to install the rest of the bloat?


Many thanks

[5711N0205W]

Open office is pretty good, can take a little time to load but better than earlier versions.
Why bother with Outlook, give Mozilla Thunderbird a try, it's free and pretty bloomin good.
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

[Memetic]

Outlook works fine with OpenOffice and you can install Outlook on its own.

Memetic

[Howard Hughes]

When I first got my computer it came with open office, I found it very easy to use and able to read documents from many formats. Just be sure that when you send a document to anyone, that you convert it to a microsoft format, just to be on the safe side. A number of times I had documents returned as the recipients were unable to be read.
Cheers, HH.:ok:

PS: I too used outlook with open office.

[Blacksheep]

We deployed it across the company on a trial basis and it caused some problems with those who don't like change and a few who used MS Office features that OpenOffice cannot do. Personally, I persisted with it and found it works well enough for occasional use. The key is remembering to save all documents in Microsoft formats.

So, how many people actually use all the features of MS Office? - Desktop publishing? Pivot tables? 150 different fonts? How many personal users or people in your organization can write an Access database? At work, I write maybe three or four Word documents in a day and alter or write an Excel workbook maybe twice a week. Like the majority of people these days, one suspects, I communicate mostly by e-mail and most frequently use the Office applications to read e-mail attachments. You can download free readers from the Microsoft site for this. (Get them quick, before MS takes them down) I use Powerpoint occasionally and Access almost never - I always have to refer to the manual while working with that.

In the end only having those who actually need these features - mostly in Finance, Sales & Marketing and Public Relations - using licence paid copies of MS Office and everyone else either on OpenOffice (or for many, even just the Word and Excel readers) would save us around 760,000 dollars a year on licence fees. Savings that could have a positive effect on many of the staff's annual bonus payment - an awfully big incentive to change. :ok: