Do OpenOffice Users Save In Microsoft Format?

superglaze writes "Looking through an article on the smartphone office suite Quickoffice, I noted a claim by a company executive that OpenOffice users usually save their documents in a Microsoft format, e.g. .doc. Hence the company has no plans to support .odf. I guess I can see the rationale for this — it helps if you're sending a document to an MS-using company — but what's this community's general experience of saving in .odf vs. .doc format?"

in a word, yes

[kevin.fowler]

Eveything I need to send document files to uses Word or PDF. Most places I send pr's or ad copy to use the old standby formats. No ODF at the local newspaper yet.

Only for sharing documents

[56]

I work at a tech desk at a university library and see a significant number of people who use open office, mainly Mac users. All of the people who have come to the desk with open office issues save in .odf. Their problem is that they want to print at the library, which requires the use of one of our information commons computers and therefore Word. So I have to show them how to save their documents as .doc files in order to load them in Word. None of them knew how to save as a .doc file and only one of them was even aware that open office saved as .odf.

Re:Count Two

[Zonk (troll)]

You should advocate installing Sun's ODF Plugin [sun.com] for MS Office. It works quite well, as is free (as in beer).

Re:Count Two

[masdog]

Depends on what you're doing...but a text searchable pdf encoder doesn't have to cost a lot. The Adobe one does, but that goes without saying. You can easily get CutePDF or some other PDF writer that uses Ghostscript to create text-searchable pdfs for little or no cost.

Re:Count Two

[DaedalusHKX]

I've done some IT over the years along with other things.

I don't see how having paid for something that has drawbacks can actually cost me a damn thing. I took all the Office disks that my old man bought during my stay "away from the company" back to Staples Office Store, raised hell with the local management that I did NOT accept the licenses, and got back a good bit of cash. Do I run office? Why would I? The entire office runs Gentoo, BSD (various flavors) and one rig of Windows XP on a tripple boot arch.

Why would I pay for office again??

For the record, I've been messing with Open Office AND KOffice.

Both are nice, and neither in windows, nor linux are either worse than MSOffice.

As I do little business that can't be communicated in plaintext, PDF or webformat, I find that distributing my app to the net would result in forcing my clients to be logged in while in the field. Frankly I'd rather have them out there with a notepad, later transcribing data, than spending all their time connected.

Frankly, my best notes were actually done on napkins with a few friends at a late night coffee shop chat. I've scanned and printed a few to post script over the years. (Ghost script, if you would.)

Quite fun to mess with, and quite useful. Helps to NOT pay 5k for something that the IT shop doesn't even get a good markup from.

Missing the point

[mpapet]

One at a time:

(A sluggish one
What's sluggish? I read this claim over and over again. In my experience, the only thing vaguely resembling sluggish is the nominally slower load. Please, provide more details.

that cloned the one I already have, at that)
That you paid a ridiculous amount of money for or stole. Most small businesses I deal with are very pragmatic and operate legitimately. Therefore they thank me when they can spend less.

I would email his boss and ask for the correct file format.
There's lots of small businesses who started their own successful businesses because they cut out that kind of political inaction. Or, maybe you should consider for a moment that I'm the boss.

It's common sense.
Maybe to you. But many small businesses LOVE the fact that I show them how to do the same job they used to do for less money.

you probably won't be in that position for very long.
Nope. Sorry. Turning away business because I maximize my customer's time/money.

It's like sending your files in Spanish.
Don't get me started on the bugs in a .doc written in one default language, then opened in a different default language. ODF? Not so much. .doc is the format of business. Microsoft has a stranglehold, but it's on a dinosaur.
Wwwait... What just happened there? On the one hand you tell me use .doc, but then establish it is on it's way to extinction. ODF isn't on its way to extinction. I'll use that.

it should be online so you can easily collaborate
So, a closed format that's more expensive to use and prevents collaboration is better because it's somehow on the web? ODF is cheaper and easier to communicate with.

Re:Don't give in!

[julesh]

If you need to exchange documents with someone that needs to edit them, PDF is not an option.

How common is this, really? I don't recall any occasion when I've expected somebody from outside my company to edit a document that I started. And inside the company, we've standardized on OO.o, so it doesn't matter which format we use. Which means we use .odt, because (a) the files are smaller and (b) it's easier to automatically process them.

Re:Count Two

[Drgnkght]

Open Office exports to PDF as well.

Re:Missing the point

[AcidPenguin9873]

In my experience, the only thing vaguely resembling sluggish is the nominally slower load.

That's what the OP meant by "sluggish". Nominally slower to you is sluggish to him. Anecdotally, I agree with the OP - the slower load time makes the entire thing seem sluggish.

That you paid a ridiculous amount of money for

The point is that he and his company has already have it. Switching away from it once they already have it doesn't save them money. Go on, give me the whole locked-in-for-upgrades schpiel. He and his company can re-evaluate their costs and needs when the time comes to upgrade.

or stole.

Why are you making accusatory assumptions like this, and why is it relevant?

Or, maybe you should consider for a moment that I'm the boss.

If you were the boss, you would have mandated ODF already, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Re:Count Two

[afroborg]

And don't you guys use GIS (if you're civil) or CAD? What are you communicating by .pdf? General work details, personnel stuff, etc?

Nope. Generally all CAD drawings get converted to PDF for the masses. Adobe reader (or Foxit or whatever) starts way quicker than most CAD programs, and it doesn't have the massive cost associated with everyone in the office having AutoCAD installed. Generally only a couple of people in the office actually do CAD, the rest of us just mark up drawings in red pen... Honestly, I've got way better things to do than piss around with CAD software all day anyway. Thats what CADdies are for.

Note that at our business the same goes for mechanical CAD drawings, schematics, specs (generated in word or excel), or any other drawings (visio etc). They all get stored on the server as PDF + the original file, so it can be edited, and it can also be viewed by everyone.

Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt.

[Fast Thick Pants]

RTF itself supports the track-changes stuff. [biblioscape.com] TextEdit won't support it of course, and I wouldn't be suprised if NeoOffice doesn't support it fully, so you may still be stuck typing in Word. But that's no reason to go sending things around in binary formats...

Send RTF files named as .doc -- 99% percent of people will never notice.

Re:Count Two

[clodney]

You really need to switch to decaf.

Your first two complaints you mention about Office is that you think it defaulted preference items the wrong way. I think auto-correct should default to on, and I suspect my position is more common than yours. I sometimes find the grammar checker annoying, but usually leave it on since it is a good proofreading aid.

Features like auto-correct, spell check and grammar check should be on for a different reason though - people who don't like them will be motivated to find the item that turns them off. But if they weren't turned on in the first place, most people would never know they were even available and wouldn't go looking for something they assume doesn't exist.

Saving in rich text instead of .doc seems like a petulant reaction that hurts you far more than MS. Does anybody but MS even use rich text anymore?

If your system is virus free, why would a .doc file you save contain a virus? And how does your save preference affect the presence or absence of viruses in .doc files sent to you by others.

And trust me, Bill Gates is not losing any sleep at night worrying about your use of the passive voice.

Re:Count Two

[MsGeek]

This is useless to me...it doesn't work in Office:Mac v.X or Office:Mac 2004.

Call me when you consider the Mac users out there, Sun.

Re:Count Two

[Joe Jay Bee]

Does anybody but MS even use rich text anymore?

Apple's TextEdit, for which RTF is the default format, tends to disagree with that comment.

Re:Count Two

[Jim_Maryland]

GIS is not a format. The output print or softcopy products generally use standard output formats like PDF, JPG, EPS, TIFF, SVG, etc... The raw data on the other hand can be in a variety of formats (most common would be ESRI shapefiles).

Oh, an interesting PDF format for GIS folks is GeoPDF by TerraGoTech [terragotech.com].

Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt.

[rjgii]

Definitely save locally as odf, and only as a doc if I'm sending it to an MS user as well.

Anyone ever notice the file size differences? It's quite dramatic.

Re:Count Two

[MightyYar]

Why would I pay for office again??

I'm not a huge fan of Office, but:

• Excel's VBA scripting environment is easier to use than OO.org's StarScript or whatever they call it. Excel's VBA editor is very helpful and nice.... small projects only, though!
• OO.org's graphing functions are even worse than Excel's, which are terrible. Graphing is one of the main things that I have historically hated about OO.org.
• Complicated Excel documents almost never import 100%.
• Complicated Word documents almost never import 100%.
• Forget any document where OLE was used.

But yeah, for simple documents I find OO.org to be just fine. It helps a lot if you don't have to read in documents from outside the company.

For most of us, we need to have MS Office installed... and at that point, why use OO.org at all?

Re:Count at least TWO who don't.

[Rukie]

I personally use .odt for all files that I save, however, as a college student I am sometimes required by a *shudder* 2007 office using teacher who only accepts doc and docx. So, I have a copy of EVERYTHING in .odt, and only required copies of .doc. Its horrible that we don't have an open standard that ALL OFFICE SUITE products willingly and gracefully use *cough* microbitches *cough*

Re:Count Two

[BugZRevengE]

I was really happily surprised by Acrobat Reader 8. At least on my laptop, it's seriously four or five times faster to load, loading almost as fast as Windows' Picture and Fax viewer (I notice this because I'm into papercrafts, which are usually either PNGs or PDFs). Finally Adobe got it right, after releasing version after version of readers, each loading slower than the last one.

Reader 8 is actually still just as slow, if not slower to load then earlier versions, they just pre-load the application as windows starts up. It can be done with pretty much any application, and I know a few people who do it with firefox and openoffice.org. It is just a command line switch in the Windows Start Menu shortcut for the application if I remember correctly. A google search should show it up.

PDFs are too scary for some

[OrangeTide]

I sent some recruiters a PDF and they just about had a heart attack. Told me they couldn't buy Adobe to read it. I tried to explain it was free and there were other readers as well. Then I found out they didn't even have MS office and were using wordpad to read those .doc resumes.

You might think wordpad is a stupid way to do it, but realize that wordpad is so stripped down that macro viruses/trojans don't work with it. I don't think the recruiters realized that advantage though.

I eventually converted it to HTML and they were happy enough with that. I was using troff for my resume (yea, I'm weird) and spitting it out as txt, html, and pdf.

Re:Count Two

[Steve001]

Monsuco wrote and included with a post:

If some moron told me to install an entire office program (A sluggish one that cloned the one I already have, at that), I would email his boss and ask for the correct file format. It's common sense. IF you abuse your position to have people install redundant software, you probably won't be in that position for very long. It's like sending your files in Spanish. .doc is the format of business.

Or you could just request an RTF. Rich text seems to work well on both. Abiword is also good with RTF so it is a good choice, it is what I use.

I agree about RTF. It is a good option since it works with just about every word processor and operating system, the formatting features it does support will reliabily render, it doesn't support macro viruses, and it produces files that are only a little bit larger than a plain text file (unless you include pictures).

For me, I've been using StarOffice 8.0 and Jarte (an RTF word processor) and I've found that both do pretty much everything that I need to do at home. I rarely use the .doc format and instead use RTF, OpenDocument, and HTML depending the type of document I'm working on.

As far as word processors of the past, the three best ones I've used are:

• WordStar 4.0 - Fixed all of the weaknesses of the previous versions without the overcomplication that came with version 5.0)
• WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS - Probably the best word processor I've ever used, it did things that Word 2003 doesn't do.
• Professional Write 2.0 - Not the most powerful word processor I've ever used, but very easy to learn and use, and one of the simplest installs I've ever had (copy the files into a directory, done).

Re:Count at least TWO who don't.

[Risen888]

OpenOffice: $0
Office 2007, right now on Amazon: $389

That might not be an issue to you, but trust me, it is for some people. Way to pass judgment when you don't know shit about shit. You're exactly why many people hate douchebags.