Dennis O’Reilly’s Workers Edge blog has some nice tips on Writer / Word compatibility settings and tweaks. This article takes our own post on using OpenOffice in a MS Office world to the next level!
This serves not only as an informational presentation about good office freeware but also as a test of a new Google Docs feature that allows Powerpoint presentations to be imbedded in blogs and webpages. Note that the three suites mentioned (OpenOffice.org, StarOffice and IBM Lotus Symphony) that can create presentations will all save those presentations in .ppt format. In fact, the presentation shown was created in StarOffice using a free downloaded template before being uploaded to Google Docs.
A full-screen version of this presentation is available here for those that are interested.
Need more information? Here’s a great article from PC Magazine on The Best Office Alternatives.
From the Unofficial Google Operating System blog:
Google Pack, the collection of applications recommended by Google, includes a new software: StarOffice, an office suite developed by Sun. In 2000 Sun released StarOffice’s source code, which became the foundation of OpenOffice.org, an open source project sponsored by Sun.
The posting has full details. StarOffice normally sells for about $70, but Google is making it available for free.
StarOffice is very similar to OpenOffice.org. For a list of differences, see the OpenOffice.org FAQ along with the StarOffice FAQ.
As we’ve stated here before, either would be a good choice for 90% of the office suite users out there.
Edit 08/14/2007:
Ryan over at CyberNet News has a good article on this as well.
Why can’t I see all the available programs on the Google Pack homepage? If you cannot see StarOffice as one of the choices at http://pack.google.com, go to Add/Remove Programs, uninstall the Google Updater and then visit http://pack.google.com again and follow the directions there to download.
Also, Google has verified that the Google Updater and all of the available Google Pack software may be legitimately used in a business environment. See the response by the Google Pack Guide in this discussion. We make this important distinction because many freeware licenses stipulate home or non-commercial use only.
In order to install the Google Updater and the programs offered through Google Pack (including StarOffice), please use Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or above or Mozilla Firefox 1.0 or above. You must also have Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista with administrator privileges on your computer.
Etan Horowitz writes for the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. His column for Saturday, July 7 listed three free alternatives to Microsoft Office.
“OpenOffice.org is downloadable software that is nearly identical to Office. The programs have catchy names “Writer” for word processing, “Calc” for spreadsheets, and “Impress” for presentations. If everyone had to create PowerPoint-like presentations using a program called “Impress,” I think we’d all be better off. I was able to do virtually everything I could do in Office, such as create pivot tables from spreadsheets and add animations to slides. If you want free software that operates the most like Microsoft Office, this is it.”
Mr. Horowitz is absolutely correct in his assessment, in our humble opinion. OpenOffice.org is the ticket, and it can be downloaded for free by clicking this button:
Be sure to see our post on Configuring the OpenOffice.org suite for use in a Microsoft Office world for instructions on how to easily set OpenOffice.org up to save files in the default Microsoft formats. This will make it much easier to exchange files with Microsoft Office users.
All modern flavors of Windows ship with Notepad and Wordpad. For some, who prefer to keep things simple, these are all the writing or word processing applications that are necessary or needed. Others will need more features and horsepower in a word processing application.
We like OpenOffice Writer as a free alternative to Microsoft Word. The only problem with Writer is that you must install the entire OpenOffice suite to get it. Another popular free standalone alternative is Abiword.
The DonationCoder website recently posted a comprehensive review of modern word processing applications. It was written by Zaine Ridling, who runs The Great Software List. The ending summary is linked here for those who wish to “cut to the chase”.
The Web Worker Daily blog has also recently posted an article listing 10 free minimalist word processors for greater productivity. In their words, “if you don’t need a million features and don’t want to shell out 400 clams to write something, give one of these great alternatives a spin”.
We couldn’t have said it any better ourselves…
Daniel Escaca wrote a great article for Free Software Magazine detailing “three lazy writer’s tricks that can relieve you of most of the drudgery involved in creating a fairly large document in OpenOffice.org Writer”.
Specifically, the article details the lazy way to:
create a title page,
create a table of contents,
and change the page numbering styles
He writes:
The computer can do so much for us if we only let it. I believe we work too hard at times, taking 20th or even 19th century habits into the 21st. We should learn more about what our software can do for us so we can apply our hard work to things that really matter.
We are in agreement - let the computer do the work because that’s what it is there for…
InPictures online tutorials are based on pictures, not words. There’s no complicated multimedia, just pictures that show exactly what to do. Nothing to buy or download.
This site just launched today. Current tutorial offerings include Microsoft Office 2003 and OpenOffice.org programs, with more to come.
Their essay entitled Killing Off The Camel is interesting reading as well.
OpenOffice.org is a free, open source alternative to Microsoft Office and other major office suites. Visit http://openoffice.org/ to find out more about it and to download it.
Part of what makes OpenOffice.org so attractive (besides being free to download, use and distribute) is its cross-compatibility with documents, spreadsheets, and presentations created with Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org Writer will open, edit, and save Microsoft Word .doc files. The same goes for OpenOffice.org Calc and Microsoft Excel .xls files, and for OpenOffice.org Impress and Microsoft PowerPoint .ppt files.
This page from Idealware offers a feature-by-feature strengths and weaknesses comparison between Microsoft Office 2003 and OpenOffice.org.
When OpenOffice.org is installed, it is set up by default to save Writer, Calc, and Impress files in their respective native (.odt for Writer, .ods for Calc, .odp for Impress) formats. These formats have been approved by the International Standards Organization as the international standard for office data.
This would be fine if everyone were using these standards. For now, the reality is that the majority of businesses and people that create and exchange documents, spreadsheets and presentations in the US do so using Microsoft’s software and standards.
This guide will show you how to configure the OpenOffice.org suite to automatically save Writer files as .doc, Calc files as .xls, and Impress files as .ppt. These files can then be easily opened and edited in Microsoft Office 97, 2000, and 2003.
This will enable OpenOffice.org users to exchange files with Microsoft Office users.
Begin by opening the OpenOffice.org Writer program. Once Writer is open, select Tools from the menu bar at the top, and then select Options from the bottom of the Tools menu as shown here.
Once the Options window opens, find the Load/Save entry in the left-hand column, and then click on the “plus-sign” next to it to expand it.
The first expanded entry under Load/Save is General. Click on the word General to highlight it and display the available options.
(click image below to open enlarged in a new tab or window)
Note the two “drop-down” menus under the Default file format heading at the bottom of the window. This is where the save settings will be changed as shown below.
To save OpenOffice.org Writer documents as Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP .doc files, click on the Always save as drop-down on the right and change the default selection from OpenDocument Text to Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP as shown above.
Next, click on the Document type drop-down on the left and select Presentation from the menu.
click image below to open enlarged in a new tab or window)
Next, click on the Always save as drop-down on the right and change the default selection from OpenDocument Presentation to Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP as shown above.
(click image below to open enlarged in a new tab or window)
Finally, click on the Document type drop-down on the left and select Spreadsheet from the menu. Then click on the Always save as drop-down on the right and change the default selection from OpenDocument Spreadsheet to Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP as shown above.
In reference to the note provided which states “Not using OpenDocument as the default format may cause formatting or content to be lost.”, we have never found this to be an issue. To be safe, it is recommended to use the Save as… feature when editing files originally created in Microsoft Office. Save your edited version under a slightly different file name so you’ll have an unchanged original version saved as well.
Finish by clicking the OK button to close the Options window and save your changes.
If you’re using OpenOffice.org on Windows and have available hard drive space, you also may want to download and install the free Word, Excel and PowerPoint Viewers from Microsoft. These have two main uses for the OpenOffice.org user. You can then create a document, spreadsheet, or presentation in OpenOffice.org, save it, and then open it in the appropriate Microsoft Office Viewer to see how it looks formatting and content-wise. You can also use the appropriate Microsoft Office Viewer to open any file that you may receive that won’t open using OpenOffice.org. Though the Microsoft Office Viewers will not allow the editing of files, content can be copied out of the viewer and pasted into the appropriate OpenOffice.org application using the Copy Paste menus or keyboard commands.
The Ramblings of a Digital Educator blog has some great links to free online OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office tutorials.
Edit (01/29/2007): Kaj Kandler’s blog also lists training resources for OpenOffice.org, as does his Plan-B for OpenOffice.org website. The screencast tutorials at Plan-B are free while the site is beta-testing.