I’ve always found that 99% of these “formatting” issues were simply because of fonts used in the document that weren’t installed on the machine opening the document.

As we all (should) know by now, different fonts consume varying amounts of document space. Any substitution the software has to make for a missing font often “upsets” the format, even if the versions match, and whether or not you’re using Word or OpenOffice. Reformatting is a common necessity when reviving a variety of older documents. I never found it to be such a big deal that it would cause someone much angst, unless maybe the user’s working knowledge of the software is lacking.

But, even so, “won’t keep the original format” is not the same as “can’t open a document”, which is what I couldn’t get.

I have experienced issues with retaining formatting, opening was never an issue, but having everything look as it did before? That’s gone. So if you open a ‘97 Word (write letterz n’ shit yo) Doc in ‘08 Word, if you used formatting and such beyond the very basics, you encounter conflicts. By conflicts, I mean it screws up how things should look and you have to reformat it to make it look good again.

@Henry:

First of all, nothing I say here is with the intention of defending MS, or belittling OO.
(I feel I had to make that initial clarification.)

I’m still struggling to understand the statement about Word not opening older Word files.
Personally, I’ve used every version and have opened literally tens of thousands of Word documents over the years, and have never come across this difficulty you’re describing. I’ve always been able to open every single file, whether from one version behind or several versions behind.

Can you elaborate on the problem(s) you’re referring to?
Maybe I’m missing something (I know! As hard to believe as that might be! LOL)

Thanks Henry! I am forced to use Office 2007/8 at work (Word/Excel/Outlook) and the default save is xlsx or docx and no backwards compatibility but worse, that stupid menu thing is REALLY annoying. And as per usual, they moved things around. “What? This is now under View? It was under Tools before and Edit before that”

The only benefit to Office is VBA because it integrates with the OS (Windoze) so easily and is VERY powerful. Sun’s StartOffice uses Java scripting (what a surprise) but it’s not as easy to pick up as VBA. I can’t remember OpenOffice’s macro ability, I tried it before but I just don’t remember.

But it’s amazing how 1997 was fine, 2003 started having some backwards issues once in a while with 1997, depending on the features, then 2007/8, yeah, what mess, fancy Microsoft banner on the top of the application but next to zero backwards compatibility without changing how things look.

OpenOffice actually solved the problem. Can’t tell you how many folks I know who downloaded OpenOffice JUST to be able to access their older word docs. Pretty sad when the ‘killer’ aspect is backward compatibility with a proprietary product, but you go on trolling, Y’hear?

(smirk)

Is that difficult? If casual user can complain about missing features then the casual user can submit ideas to the developers, as they clearly know what they want and OpenOffice doesn’t yet have!

Try asking Microsoft to add something you’d like to see in Office, you’ll have much better luck with OpenOffice and they’ll probably refer you to a “howto” page that explains the feature you think is missing is actually there, and how to use it.

You say that as if every casual user has the knowledge and skill to re-write major portions of a complex piece of software…

http://kohei.us/2007/10/02/history-of-calc-solver/

OpenOffice project in particular is extremely sick, that one must now think about its survival.

http://www.gnome.org/~michael/blog/ooo-commit-stats-2008.html

1) Take the OpenOffice source code
2) Modify it to your own liking and add the familiar Microsoft Office interface
3) Release it under the GPL so as to avoid a similar lawsuit

Problem solved!

If more people stopped complaining and started contributing to open source, more people would be happier with open source and finally see the limitations imposed by proprietary systems and how non-flexible and “feature forced” they are.

xkcd – Mine too. He’s great.

Cheers!

If they can find another implementation that doesn’t infringe on the patent, they can resume selling word. Or, if they could simply remove the infringing features.

On another note, xkcd has been one of my favorite comics for a while now.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/collections.png

No it won’t, Open Office is there for the public.
Did MS forget about that?