So who used Open Office?

[The_Brown_Light]

I've been using is a lot since my legit version of Microsoft Office gimped out on me during my University days. I much prefer the Open Office and am wondering how others who use it find the open source alternative to Microsoft propriety product?

Also for those not wanting to either pay for this and want to move towards more open source. You can read up on it.

https://www.openoffice.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org

[TheAnimus]

I find it very disappointing, can't do a fraction of the stuff I can with Excel, the dictionary isn't as good for correcting my spelling and grammar issues (strongly dyslexic) and nothing comes close to OneNote.

Also the UI I find to be much harder.

[Dooms]

I've tried it a few times and found similar problems to TheAnimus. I tend to use full MS Office most of the time and fall back onto Google Docs when I don't have access to Office on a machine.

[Ttaskmaster]

I used it for a bit.
It was good for a free product, but I use MS Office a lot at work and so have certain habits and ways of doing things.
What I missed most was the shortcuts. OpenOffice doesn't feature a lot of the little things that make working more efficient. I don't recall if it has things like the formulae in Excel, either...
I ended up ditching OpenOffice and just using MS Works (came installed free with WinXP on my Netbook), until I could sort out the full Office suite on my PC.

[Smudger]

I've just installed it for my folks as they needed to open a document someone sent them from Word for Mac. It just didn't display properly in Office XP, they didn't want to pay for a 2013 licence for Office when the old version still covers most of what they want. Open Office could open the file and display it correctly. I wouldn't use it as a primary office suite, but for situations like this, it worked a treat.

[Phage]

As above. It's fine for the parents and the kids, but I don't use it.

[shaithis]

I used it for a bit.
It was good for a free product, but I use MS Office a lot at work and so have certain habits and ways of doing things.
What I missed most was the shortcuts. OpenOffice doesn't feature a lot of the little things that make working more efficient. I don't recall if it has things like the formulae in Excel, either...

Pretty much sums it up for me.

If I hadn't used MS Office so extensively (hell, since 1993 every job I have had I have been given Office on my PC - 22 years of it!) I would probably highly rate OpenOffice, which I have used on a number of Linux installs to do the odd fast document or (not so fast) spreadsheet.

As a freebie though, it's probably unsurpassed.

[Galant]

I used to use it a lot, for personal stuff, it took a little getting used to and it's annoying re-learning how Calc/Excel works. I have to spend a good deal of time in Excel for work, though, and I find the MS Office experience quite a bit smoother.

I imagine it just comes down to familiarity and whether or not you're a 'power user'. I've never found any other spreadsheet software that can beat Excel, although for simply tasks there are several that are fine.

Having said that, I've been using Google's Office suite a lot for work since we have that available to us and use the email and Drive functions and now I'd easily choose Google over Open Office. I know there are quite a few who won't touch Google products with a barge pole but since we have to use gmail etc. for work that wasn't a concern for me, and if you're a regular user of google products that may be less of an issue. Both the Google word processor and the presentation creator are excellent, and their spreadsheet program is actually improving, although Excel still reigns. If Google can get the spreadsheet program to work as well as Excel then for our in-house team we might never need to use Office, although I'll still be using and recommending it for clients.

[jag272]

Tried it out on a few occasions in the past and as the others said, it just really didn't work for me. Only handled a fraction of what I needed it to and found the layout quite strange to use. I just use Google Docs now, it has its limitations due to being web based but the layout is much more reasonable and saving between docx and google docs tends to have very few compatibility issues if any from my experience (tables sometimes mess up but thats about it).

Google docs simply seems to be more capable and a more similar experience in how it works.

[DanceswithUnix]

Surely you mean LibreOffice?

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...presentations/

[peterb]

I do, as a multiplatform (Windows, Linux and OSX) it is very good.

However for heavyweight word-processing I use Corel's wordperfect, sadly only available for ~windows now, although I can (and probably will) run a VM with windows just so I can use WP.

I did have to buy a copiy of MS office recently, and while it was a pleasure to get Excel back, Word was just as clunky, quirky and irritating as it always was, perhaps worse with the new user unfriendly ribbon bar. Must the fact that there is still no proper reveal codes, and changing one thing in a document potentially ruins the formatting throughout.

Horrid.

[MrJim]

Surely you mean LibreOffice?

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...presentations/

That article explains that:

LibreOffice is a fork of the OpenOffice suite created in 2010 amid concerns of Oracle's stewardship of OpenOffice; OpenOffice was subsequently transferred to the Apache Software Foundation. Both projects have subsequently continued as open source alternatives to Microsoft Office.

[DanceswithUnix]

That article explains that:

Indeed, though the Linux distros seemed to move over to Libre Office as part of that episode of dumb politics, taking an awful lot of momentum with it.

I don't know anyone who stuck with Open Office, and I have a paid for copy of Linux Star Office kicking around somewhere so I have been using this for some time

[BlueScream]

I use it, but am not exactly a power user so it suits me fine.

[mikeo01]

MS Office is pretty decent. Obviously it excels in Excel and Powerpoint. Though Visio and Project are a bit annoying to use (Project especially) considering they're MS's "business" suite of tools.

However, apart from the easy reference citations and auto-magic Word has, it still drives me insane as it tries to hold your hand throughout. "Fixing" everything.

Quick notes: OneNote. Anything to do with citations Word.


Fortunately I don't have to use Office much any more if at all. But other than that I tend to find alternative software/tools to use, unless again its a spreadsheet or a quick powerpoint presentation.


So unless its a freebie I would say OpenOffice would do. It was good back in its days but we've got Google docs and MS online stuff like OneNote, Word Online etc nowadays.

[Output]

I did use OpenOffice for a while, but switched to LibreOffice when they forked it due to the Oracle issues and haven't looked back.