Is anyone using Open Office?

[rooster]

Are there any major issues with it that I should know about before downloading?

Any security issues that I should be fearful of?

I need to do some spreadsheet work and also write a few docs up in word and this seems much cheaper & easier than installing MS Office.....

Any advice is much appreciated guys.

Regards



Roy

[Neil Whitworth]

I use it at home and work. Couldn't be bothered digging out the MS office DVD when I needed it. Have no problems swapping (simple) documents with others who use MS office. More advanced things can sometime break, but that can happen between different versions of MS office as well.

Not aware of any security issues, but I do beleive Open Office has a comparable scripting language. I think it can run macros from word documents, but I have never tried. As with everything else, if your not sure about it, don't open it.

[JasonP]

Originally Posted by rooster

Are there any major issues with it that I should know about before downloading?

Any security issues that I should be fearful of?

I need to do some spreadsheet work and also write a few docs up in word and this seems much cheaper & easier than installing MS Office.....

Any advice is much appreciated guys.

I use it. It doesn't have as many bells and whistles as MS Office, but then most people don't use them anyway. It does have an export to PDF function for documents that I find very handy.

There was a security alert, but they patched it.

Jason

[Timbo]

Yep use it all the time!
Big Linux fan!
It comes with Knoppix,Ubunto etc as standard!
If you want to frighten your boss/ asdministrator, boot a live Knoppix cd on your system!
Brilliant for diagnostics/recovering data etc and doing things that you maybe should'nt
Excellent planetarium software onboard called Kstars
Lets you go where windows has never gone before!
(three cheers for Firefox!)
KNOPPIX Linux Live CD
Mozilla Firefox 1.5 download - UK

OpenOffice.org: Home

[applepie]

i used it briefly and had huge problems switching some larger complex documents into word and vice-versa. so not as compatible as it seems.

the pdf function was what I was after which didnt work for me either as it used to mess up alot of my figures and some text spacing.

however, i think the problem was the documents were originally created in word. if I had started using openoffice to do the documents i have a feeling these problems wont exist.

forgot which version i used, about 1.5-2 years ago.

so things are probably alot better now.

word still sucks but thats what most of the world uses and thats why we have to use it.

i have a few anti-M$ friends who use it with no problmes but I dont know what kinda of documents they were working with.

[Timbo]

Originally Posted by applepie

word still sucks but thats what most of the world uses and thats why we have to use it.

Open office now has filters for most new and old formats across all platforms
therefore making it a damned usefull for dealing with older documents and awkward formatting!

Which is a good reason to try an alternative, such as a Linux operating system!

Be subversive!!

or submersive!!

[ardhill]

I use it with no problems in preference to MS Office. And the latest version has just been released too.

[Scuby]

As others have said, just be careful if you want to transfer any spreadsheets / complex word documents between Open Office and MS Office - even on recent versions of Open Office i've seen MS spreadsheets fall in a heap when you try to open it in Open Office. Not sure about transfer the other way, never tried. If you write documents in isolation then it'll be fine. If you transfer files to or from work / friends / other computers with MS Office on then personally I wouldn't bother with the hassle.