Guide on OpenOffice.......

[rhitwick]

Hi FOSS frnds........plz help me out in the following ......

My friend is in a company.........they use Windows office suite and now wants to deploy OpenOffice in a particular location(means particular office) and ............their project will be handling the conversion..........

Need guidance on the following topics:-
1> Diff. b/w Windows office and OpenOffice.
2> Any extra features or feature cut compared to WinOffice

It'll be more helpfull if you provide with some links..........believe me u'll really be helping in a big way............
Thanx in advance..........

[sakumar79]

How about http://www.techsoup.org/learningcent...e/page4765.cfm for some info... For more info just google "open office vs ms office"

Arun

[MetalheadGautham]

Question: What was the previous Office Suite they were using ? Exact name. Was it MS Works or MS Office ? Which year ? (office 2000, 2003, 2007, 2008, etc)

[mehulved]

In extra features you have export to PDF for one. Then you have OpenOffice Drawing and OpenOffice Math, which have no equivalent in MS Office.
Most of the problems people have initially are really superficial while migrating to OpenOffice. In fact, I have an ongoing assignment where a section of a company is converting to OpenOffice. I am yet to find such a thing which would hamper their routine. Only 2 problems unsolved as of now are
1) Resizing cells in Calc while in Print Preview, if someone has solution to this can you please put it down here.
2) Finding a macro to convert figures to text, they already have one made in VB for MS Office. Searching for a similar one for OpenOffice. I did actually find one but it doesn't handle numbers >= 21000.

[rhitwick]

Originally Posted by MetalheadGautham

Question: What was the previous Office Suite they were using ? Exact name. Was it MS Works or MS Office ? Which year ? (office 2000, 2003, 2007, 2008, etc)

Previous versions which will be replaced with OpenOffice will be majority of Office2003 and very less no. of Office2007.

Originally Posted by mehulved

In fact, I have an ongoing assignment where a section of a company is converting to OpenOffice. I am yet to find such a thing which would hamper their routine.

If u r in any IT company then most probably you know that EXCEL is the most used office feature above any Programming lang. or any other things
So, the main concerns they are hesitating now, is how much of Excel functionality would be there, like hlookup-vlookup etc.......

[FilledVoid]

Hi there,

My friend is in a company.........they use Windows office suite and now wants to deploy OpenOffice in a particular location(means particular office) and ............their project will be handling the conversion..........

nice to know. Give OpenOffice a try and you might be impressed with what you see.

Need guidance on the following topics:-
1> Diff. b/w Windows office and OpenOffice.

1. Number one theres the price issue of course.

2. Then the default create pdf file from Ooo that is available while MS-Office requires the installation of a third party utility to do the same. Although I;m not sure if this si the case with latest versions of Ms-Office.

3. When it comes down to documentation OOo pretty much can hold its ground against Ms-Office when its features are compared. However in the end of the day what will matter is how much of those features will you or the people who work in the company actually use. For example check out "Track Changes" in MS-Office I don't believe theres a similar feature in Ooo.

4. Opening one suites file in another suite tends to lead to disaster especially if you are a perfectionist. One suites Macros won't work in the other. Most excel file users or proficient ones tend to use Macros (Trust me on this) and without that functionality or having to recreate macros from the start would definitely be a put off for me. if no one uses complex Macros or if its something that you don't mind recreating then no problem .

5. If you are intimidated by the Ribbon interface then definitely OOo is a God send.

6. Theres a factor of training your users to get used to OOo after they used MS-Office. Whether people or like it or not they will have tog et used to the interface and the way of OOo doing tasks, this will take a bit of time. So if your work depends heavily on the use of an Office Suite I recommend installing OOo parallel to MS-Office and allow the folks to get used to it instead of rolling them all out at once and removing MS-Office.

2> Any extra features or feature cut compared to WinOffice

There are any features cut that I know of .

It'll be more helpfull if you provide with some links..........believe me u'll really be helping in a big way............

Check out OOo documentation also googling for the above should give you more information. All of the above I posted was more like from my own usage experience.

If u r in any IT company then most probably you know that EXCEL is the most used office feature above any Programming lang. or any other things
So, the main concerns they are hesitating now, is how much of Excel functionality would be there, like hlookup-vlookup etc.......

Ah yes . This was the information I was looking for. You will find very small if any changes at all to the formulas. Those hlookup and vlookup's will work . I do think that there are some quirks with array formulas in OOo but I think that might just be for me . But then again if your users are advanced in Excel and use Macros like actual VBA then you are goig to experience problems until you get the equivalent in OOo.

[vish786]

Had this pdf.. uploaded it, might prove helpful while switching. (you might find updated one too if there is )
http://www.2shared.com/file/3566063/...penOffice.html

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/
check this link too

you rather sound like a student

[rhitwick]

Originally Posted by vish786

you rather sound like a student

Are yaar...........just 1.5yrs I'm in a job............
Couldn't recover from the hangover of my student life till now.

Thanx..........

[mehulved]

Originally Posted by rhitwick

If u r in any IT company then most probably you know that EXCEL is the most used office feature above any Programming lang. or any other things

No I am hardly associated with IT or IT companies, thankfully.

Originally Posted by rhitwick

So, the main concerns they are hesitating now, is how much of Excel functionality would be there, like hlookup-vlookup etc.......

Most of it, if not all. Problems could be with custom macros, which you will need to rewrite in python or OpenOffice basic,. Then there might be small differences in the way of working. All your formulae and features are there, hlookup, vlookup. Well you could have looked it up yourself in OpenOffice.

Originally Posted by FilledVoid

For example check out "Track Changes" in MS-Office I don't believe theres a similar feature in Ooo.

There is
Edit => Changes

Originally Posted by FilledVoid

4. Opening one suites file in another suite tends to lead to disaster especially if you are a perfectionist. One suites Macros won't work in the other. Most excel file users or proficient ones tend to use Macros (Trust me on this) and without that functionality or having to recreate macros from the start would definitely be a put off for me. if no one uses complex Macros or if its something that you don't mind recreating then no problem .

Well if you're moving off to OpenOffice for once and for all then it makes sense to recreate the macro(s) for OpenOffice. You did it for MS Office then why not for MS Office?

Originally Posted by FilledVoid

6. Theres a factor of training your users to get used to OOo after they used MS-Office. Whether people or like it or not they will have tog et used to the interface and the way of OOo doing tasks, this will take a bit of time. So if your work depends heavily on the use of an Office Suite I recommend installing OOo parallel to MS-Office and allow the folks to get used to it instead of rolling them all out at once and removing MS-Office.

From my single experience at ITM Badlapur, this has hardly been the case. I have seen them use OpenOffice without a hitch. Only thing required is push from above

Originally Posted by rhitwick

Are yaar...........just 1.5yrs I'm in a job............
Couldn't recover from the hangover of my student life till now.

Thanx..........

You're too slow.