Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice.org

It used to be that your choice of office suites was limited to Microsoft Office or...Microsoft Office. Yet over the last couple of years, a viable open-source option has emerged: OpenOffice.org. Which is right for your organization? The Idealware article Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice.org weighs the pros and cons of each.

Have a preference or want to make the case for another office application? Share your input here!

I just had the experience of having to do Mail Merge on Open Office, after using Word. The mail merge on Open Office is really, really, bad and buggy. It puts the address in the wrong font in a text box where you can not align it with the rest of the document! It's kind of a joke, and it also makes the program crash. Meanwhile, the mail merge on Word 2003 is really nice. You just need to refer to a spreadsheet file, and when you update that spreadsheet and your Word merge file gets easily updated.

If you use mail merge in Word, I would not switch to Open Office. The other features of open office seem to work well for me.

George

I've been using OpenOffice.org since before version 1.0, and our office has been using OpenOffice.org since about 2003.

It's rather good. That is, the features are good (especially compared to users' needs), the compatability is great (sometimes opening Word documents that Word doesn't), the stability is good, and the price is excellent. We provide virtually no formal training, but staff, volunteers, and clients pick it up without major problems. The biggest problem I've seen is that people don't know what file formats are, so they are confused that other people can't open OpenDocument attachments. Since OpenDocument is now an ISO standard, hopefully that issue will diminish.

Regarding mail merge: I prefer the OpenOffice.org v1 mail merge system. Version 2 introduced a wizard (which I never use) and hid the old mail merge system, but you can still use the old system.

One of the main reasons we decided on OpenOffice.org in 2003 was that we had a lot of Pentium I Windows 95 systems. The new Microsoft Office refused to install, but OpenOffice.org installed fine. Today, we are running a mix of Linux and Windows systems. All have OpenOffice.org and a few also have Microsoft Office.

One of my favorite parts of open source software in general is the convenience of not having to worry managing license compliance: ordering products, counting licenses, entering product keys, fighting product activation, etc.

Our non-profit helps the homeless and poor in Colorado, USA. We have some 40 computer systems and an annual budget over $1 million.

A timely article - Tomorrow morning I'm installing nine computers we are donating to a local school for special needs kids. Yesterday I loaded all of them with the latest release of Open Office, AVG and a few additional education-focused freebie applications.

Open Office is becoming a real contender - Still not corporate level, still not as feature rich as the obvious competitor product (and I notice in the latest OO license nag screens that Sun is taking a lot more credit nowadays!) - but still it's getting a lot better... and OO is certainly a heck of a lot cheaper!

Don

Good artical. I am a big open source fan. One issue that comes to mind is that all through the artical, the authors keep compairing Outlook to Thunderbird, and Sunbird. Although these are valid compairisons for Windows or Mac. There is a native linux competitor to Outlook called Evolution. It is part of the Gnome project. It is a direct competitor to Outlook, it integrates with an exchange server just like outlook. It has a user interface nearly the same as outlook. This program, with openoffice on linux, creates almost a complete replacement for the windows desktop.

donc

You state: "...Still not corporate level..." That may be true here in the US, but in Europe the corporations and governmental agencies have embraced it in a big way.

I'm not in the US, and my observation was made seven months ago .. :-)

Although I do take your point that as Open Office improves it has found a wider corporate market (not main-stream yet but getting there).

Don

I've used Open Office for several years, both for personal and business use, but this wasn't the case at the main office. Just this year, the newest Open Office installation disk was circulated at the main office. It is still not the standard Office installation, but it definitely is a contender.

Working in InfoSys (or IT depending on your preferred terminology), I am often asked by staff or contractors for a copy of our Office and other software... something we can't do under license (with the exception of our virus-scanner).

For this reason I make available a free CD for anyone who asks of software we have found useful and/or offers compatibility with our larger systems, and Open Office is included on this.

I don't however like attempts to draw comparison between Open Office and Microsoft Office, because in truth they are very different products - more so than ever with the introduction of Office 2K7 and the associated interactions with SharePoint portal and other back-end server systems. Also Open Office simply has no counterpart for MS Office components like InfoPath, Publisher, Project and Visio etc. meaning it's not an 'either/or' decision... you simply can't use Open Office to open and read a Microsoft Project, Publisher or Visio file - it just won't work.

Nonetheless Open Office is excellent for the home or small office where requirements are relatively simple and can be met by the contained suite of OO applications.

Cheers, Don

I've often been in situations similar to Don.

Over the past several years, many friends have wanted me to give them copies of various papers and spreadsheets I have. Fortunately, I have a variety of tools, including MS Office, WordPerfect, MS Works, and OpenOffice, so, for many things, I can convert the documents or spreadsheets I have to the format people need (or open what they send me -- only after appropriate scanning with an anti-virus tool).

There are some, including some small businesses, that purchased computers, seemingly off the shelf of a Big Box store, and use MS Works as the word processor, spreadsheet, and database tool-of-choice. Perhaps some of this is due to lack of knowledge, some due to ... who knows! No matter, using a tool designed to meet home-users' needs in a business environment may cut it for the short term, but don't try to communicate with the outside world. That's how I happened to stumble upon some of those folks: they would send me a "large database" -- an MS Works 4.5 database (think circa 1997 or so). Yes, v4.5 of Works, as many will tell you, was the best version released of the program, but it still isn't up-to-snuff for business.

I use MS Office, and have since it was introduced. I was one of the first people in my area of Illinois to be certified as a trainer for MS Word for Mac in 1990.

While I support -- and bug -- issues with OOo (OpenOffice.org -- the full and proper name of the software product), I do not use it for business purposes, as there are too many shortcomings for what we need on a daily basis, and too many inconsistent behaviors and display issues. The full compatibility isn't there. Yet. One day, perhaps. Just not yet.

I do send copies of OOo to friends, business associates, other non-profits, and those we work with. I have at least two OOo CDs in my Franklin Planner, along with two CDs for Ubuntu, any time I am out and about. When I talk with someone, the subject turns to computing, I pull out an appropriate CD and hand it to them.

Sometimes it is surprising to find many in the business community who do not have appropriate tools to communicate with others. Heck, it is horrible when I get an email from someone using a disposable email account for business -- and the business has been around for a long time (30 years or more!), is very profitable, but the owners just haven't built a site, nor do they have an email account.

Am working with an 778 page manuscript when it's on XP that turns out to be about 910 pages on OO. Each works but OO has immensely more options for the guru as you can bring in text from 18 text formats versus 9 for XP. Perhaps this makes no difference to the average writer but if you merge text from old systems or persons from foreign countries far different that what US routines then OO is a great asset. :flash;

For a 4 computer nonprofit whose ED (me) is also the IT staff, it is less expensive to purchase MS Windows XP Pro and MS Office Pro licenses from TechSpoup Stock than to have to go through the learning curve associated with both learning linux and openoffice.org.

Tom Scott
San Diego Housing Federation

One does not need to learn Linux before using OpenOffice on Windows.

I must protest this slander of the OpenOffice.org mail merge. ;> It's not buggy. It's not wizard-licious but it's straightforward and the simplest way to do it is just to do it from scratch.

1 - Get your spreadsheet or other data
2 - Make a data source under File > New > Database. Select your data format, like Spreadsheet, in the first window, click Next, specify the location of the spreadsheet, click Next and save using an appropriate name.
More detail here.
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid39_gci1162261,00.html
3 - Choose View > Data Sources and find your datasource
4 - Create a new empty Writer document and drag the fields you want exactly where you want them. Add other text, format it however you want it, etc.
5 - Choose to print, click Yes when asked if you want to print a form letter, and print to the desired output.

You can also use the advanced but complex Mail Merge Wizard
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/02/techtarget_arti.html

and the hidden but simpler mail merge wizard.
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid39_gci1173108,00.html

Again, it's not a wizardy easy-peasy mail merge but it works very logically and the scratch approach is very simple.

I have various mail merge topics here.

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/mail_merge/index.html

Is it possible to be slanderous to computer code? - :-)