Do OpenOffice Users Save In Microsoft Format? 620
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?"
Count at least ONE who doesnt. (Score:3, Insightful)
Count Two (Score:3, Interesting)
If I'm in the position of being able to return a
Re:Count Two (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Microsoft has a stranglehold, but it's on a dinosaur. Software like this should not be locally installed, it should be online so you can easily collaborate. Beating Microsoft by copying them is silly because they will always be a step ahead.
Re:Count Two (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Count Two (Score:4, Informative)
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?
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For others who want to do the MS thing, I fully enforce it. Then I let them screw it up, so they pay MORE. It s
Missing the point (Score:4, Informative)
(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
Wwwait... What just happened there? On the one hand you tell me use
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.
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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 lik
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I find the nail-growing load/save times intensely frustrating, to say nothing of the glacial start-up time.
Compared to MS Office, which goes like a road-runner in comparison. Of course, that would be a road-runner that slams into brick walls from time to time and doesn't know how to pick itself up again. But I've carried that analog
Re:Count Two (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Count Two (Score:4, Funny)
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And if the Goatse guy comes to see you, you actually don't have to do anything.
...
Goatse guy coming to see you... with his business end... yes, I knew there was a reason I didn't go to study medicine.
Re:Count Two (Score:5, Funny)
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Good thing I'm an engineer, the format of engineering is PDF.
I'm no engineer, but I send my files only as PDFs.
I'm well aware not many people use OO.o, so I take care to provide them with a universally readable document.
The fact that they can't edit it is an added bonus, too.
Though a funny thing happened a while ago... one of my college professors mailed me with a question on how to "open files created with a Linux office suite" (it's a faculty of humanities, and I'm one of the few Linux freaks there).
I offered her to convert the documents for her if there are
PDFs are too scary for some (Score:3, Informative)
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
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Re:Count Two (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Oh, an interesting PDF format for GIS folks is GeoPDF by TerraGoTech [terragotech.com].
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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 th
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Cheers. Good show bud.
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Monsuco wrote and included with a post:
Re:Count Two (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Count Two (Score:4, Informative)
Call me when you consider the Mac users out there, Sun.
They hate me for my freedom. (Heh.) (Score:3, Interesting)
'.doc' is not a single format (Score:3, Interesting)
'.doc' is a whole shitload of different formats, some very differentm some only a little different. However, it is because of the differences that sales for new versions of MS Office are driven. If the old programs could read the new formats, then we wouldn't have that problem. Why else do you think that MS Offfice 2007 munges your old files [slideshare.net]?
If MS published the specs for the old binary formats, we wouldn't ahve that problem either. Or if MS Office supported an open format like OpenDocument we wouldn't
Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt. (Score:5, Insightful)
(OT: Has everyone seen the new Open Rights Group T-shirts?)
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Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt. (Score:4, Insightful)
Businesses tend to be more pragmatic than that. If someone sends us a
OTOH, it's never worth the risk of sending an odd format when something standard will do. I don't think I've needed to send anything other than text, HTML, jpg/gif, or csv for years. If I did, I'd go with whatever seemed easiest on all sides (probably PDF).
On the main topic, I'd guess that most openoffice users do save in Microsoft format. The only reason I ever see anyone install it is to read and respond to those crappy
Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt. (Score:4, Funny)
So what you are saying is, saving files in
A new advertising angle for Microsoft's marketroids.
Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt. (Score:5, Funny)
S.
Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt. (Score:5, Funny)
Not unless the subject line was britney_spears_naked, anyway.
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Since then I have acquired a
Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, they ended up delaying my moving significantly and then asking me for some extra fees that I'd never known about. I objected, and they said this information was all in the doc file I'd signed.
"Oh, the one I could barely read? It wasn't shown in the version I saw, because I couldn't read much. I sent you what WordPad did with it - what I signed was that."
Turned out that a lot of the major clauses were missing in that version due to WordPad's crummy handling - but since I'd signed it, and they'd accepted it (I presume without looking at it, otherwise they would have seen how mangled it was), they had technically agreed to the modified version which didn't have any of those fees at all.
I was tired of dealing with them by then anyway, so I told them to either deliver my stuff at the price that I'd agreed to or send it back to the place they'd picked it up from and refund my money, as I'd certainly never agreed to give them more than they had already received. They delivered it in two days.
I do it. (Score:3)
So, for any document that I'm going to have to share with others... I use
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She called me crazy, I took it up with the billing department and demanded a refund of my tuition and filed a complaint. A week later I was turning in written papers to a different professor.
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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.
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Although it must be nice to live in a world where the numbers we've discussed don't qualify as "high cost," a lot of people would disagree with you.
My argument is that its not nearly as expensive as the OP was claiming just to use Word.
I concede that I pulled $3xx from the Super-Duper Mega Ultra Office Edition, but it just happened to be the first thing a search turned up. OTOH, I wasn't includin
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The student was fully correct to 1) try to negotiate with the teach and 2) when that failed, switch to a more competent one. If the teacher is *requiring* a format that can be used by only one application on only one platform (both of which are expensive to acquire, operate and maintain) then they have too much ignorance or too much of an axe to grind to be allowed to continue teaching. To add to the damage, that application munges older files in older formats [slideshare.net]
Sadly, yes (Score:2)
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Don't give in! (Score:5, Insightful)
I save in
The MS formats are so particular that the given version of office that people are using will maul my document. OO exports to PDF well, I dont need to check on it.
Re:Don't give in! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you need to exchange documents with someone that needs to edit them, PDF is not an option.
Re:Don't give in! (Score:5, Informative)
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
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The obvious example is resumes that you send via a recruitment agency. They edit it to remove all your contact details and any URLs that link to your work before faxing it to the customer.
Hence why they refuse to accept PDFs even though that's the most logical format (guaranteed correct layout, compatibility, ease of viewing/printing)
Re:Don't give in! (Score:4, Funny)
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Save in ODF (Score:3, Interesting)
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There is one document that I have needed to send someone in a format they could edit in the last few weeks, and he requested that I share it through Google Documents.
I was pretty impressed with Google docs (first time I used it btw), and that might be the real threat to MS office as an interchange format.
ODF for me, DOC for thee (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:ODF for me, DOC for thee (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, what I'd like (and might be available, I haven't looked) is the option to automatically save in multiple formats whenever you push the save key. If it automatically "worked" in
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I could be a dick and send them
Pushing OO is great when people don't have microsoft office to begin with, but once they have it, they don't want to try it.
Neither....PDF! (Score:2)
Re:Neither....PDF! (Score:5, Insightful)
However, my main format, especially when collaborating is
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Depends what the document is for (Score:2)
It depends (Score:2)
my experiences (Score:2, Interesting)
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Lesson #1: Microsoft's Office suite has as many gotchas as OO.org.
Lesson #2: Don't ever trust your potential customer when they tell you, "Don't worry we've got all that.."
And they are the reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless I have an explicit reason (Score:2)
.DOC (Score:5, Insightful)
ODF-only here (Score:3, Insightful)
I only send a
And, even then, only when I can't make him/her install OpenOffice.
Interopability (Score:2, Interesting)
They pretty much have to... (Score:2)
As much as it would be great if more organisations were using open office, when there's an 99% monopoly, your shooting yourself in the foot if you don't.
Argue till your blue in the face against me here, but you know it's true.
in a word, yes (Score:4, Informative)
Not me (Score:2)
I use the free Word 97 Viewer (available in MS's site) to view
I always save documents in openoffice format. (Score:3, Insightful)
Mostly .odt (Score:2)
We used to. (Score:5, Insightful)
We changed all internal to OO.o formats and all documents that exit the company must be sent as pdf. we did this for 3 reasons. compatability, security, and simplicity.
compatable. even a solaris machine can display a pdf. simplicity. PDF is actually the most universal document format no matter what Microsoft says.
Security. We had a problem with a salesperson that sent a contract to a client. the client sent it back and accepted it. The salesperson used the file sent back by the customer as the legal document and did not check it for changes. we got SCREWED because the asshole client changed several things silently in their favor.
If we sent them a PDF, they cant play that game as all contracts have to be sent to legal for acceptance as the oridional document format. this solved this problem.
Re:We used to. (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd need to put in place a proceedure that checks and confirms the MD5Sum or imposes digital signatures.
Munge.
A good way to not piss off Microsoft (Score:2)
For the record: I save as
Only for sharing documents (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Only for sharing documents (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, on the other side of the coin may be the fact that Microsoft has provided the library with computers for free, under the contract that no openoffice gets installed on them. Fine, and well -- then set up one computer which the library has purchased free and clear, that sends the
If the contract specifies no open-office anywhere, at all, then I'd say that the users should be informed of that fact, and be given the opportunity to sign up on a list of complainants, for the purpose of a university-wide lawsuit against Microsoft.
Default to native, export to doc (Score:2)
I always default to native formats, and export to MS if necessary.
There used to (and may still) be a bug in the OOo spreadsheet, Calc, when it exported to .xls. If I had a cell that calculated a value from another tab that was itself a calculated value that referred to another cell (on any tab, even the current one), that would not export cleanly. When the xls file launched in Excel, it would show "!ERR" or something. If you clicked on the cell, then its equation and hit enter, it would evaluate correct
The Peter Principle. (Score:2)
Of course the executive will only see DOC files, and well, because he's retarded mentally like so many of his ilk, assume that everyone uses DOC for everything.
ODT / PDF (Score:2)
Prefs, in order (Score:2)
In order
1. PDF
2. Openoffice ODF
3. MS Office
I do save a lot of files in PDF, from news sources etc.
Save in native formats (Score:2)
Save in OpenOffice formats, usually export to PDF, sometimes export to .DOC.
I have a fully licensed copy of Word 97, but haven't bought a Microsoft Office product since then.
some of each (Score:2)
I think ODF is the better archival format because the binary formats of MS Office are not even 100% compatible across different versions of MS Office today. They are convoluted and difficult to support. Microsoft is sure to phase out support eventually. Once you get into the newer
at home... (Score:2)
Interesting (Score:2)
Saving to .doc appears to be faster (Score:2)
Saving to .doc appeared faster. In other words, the save operation concluded in less time as compared to .odt. I am yet to find out why.
One data point (Score:2)
I always save if OpenDocument format. When it comes time to send a copy to someone else, I send a PDF, unless they need to be able to edit it. If they do, then I save a copy in MS Office format and send that, unless I think they're likely to have OOo -- or might be interested in installing it.
Regardless, my working copy is always in OpenDocument format. The only time I use MS Office formats as working formats is if I'm collaborating on a document with people who don't have OOo, and then I actually use
Yes, Rather Than Convert for Sharing (Score:2)
If those OO.o files were really proper objects, rathe
Going to ODT (Score:3, Interesting)
When I save to ODT, the documents are stable.
When I save to
However, I do use OOo to fix corrupted word documents. I open them, save them as ODT, then resave them as word and then word does not crash on them any more.
We need a really easy-to-use tool... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that people's computers aren't coming pre-installed with software that can read our "primary" Open File Formats. Heck -- even when I send my Macintosh-toting friends Ogg Vorbis files, they don't have any idea how to open them, so eventually I get enough complaints and just re-encode in mp3 format (and feel bad about trying and failing at spreading the Good Word).
Perhaps the best thing that us geeks could do to support open file formats is to develop a little "Unknown File Format" system utility for all of the current flavors of Windows and OSX. The utility would sit in the background and would pop up a little note whenever the user tried to open a file of an unrecognized type, telling the user that the file was, say, an XCF image file created by The GIMP, and offering to download an appropriate program to either view or edit the file.
If we had such a tool, we could feel much better about sending out open file formats like Ogg Vorbis, knowing that even clueless users would only be a click away from opening our files.
Need viewer application + plugin (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, it seems to me though that (when sharing) OpenOffice users might not save in
Only when forced to. (Score:3)
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I don't use OpenOffice because it is free, I use it because it is better.
Users are lazy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I save in ODF (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a dick that likes to slow down the business process and make others install redundant software (if they are even allowed to) that both costs time and money, but I don't care because it makes me feel important.
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Translation:
I'm a professional who ought to about the dangers of proprietary data format. However, supporting open formats takes work and it might hurt my oh-so-dear reputation. So instead of that, I'm just going to sit around and leach of the reputation of those who really do care about the software industry. Besides, what users don't know won't hurt them, right?
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:2, Insightful)
As for me, when I was in college, I always saved as ODF unless I knew the document was going to leave my hard drive. If a professor asked for something submitted through e-mail, or if I was collaborating with a peer, I'd convert it. Now that I'm in the working world, I do most work on my work supplied laptop running XP, and most of what I do is very collaborative anyway. At home, for personal use, it's ODF all the way. My fiance, who