Has anyone downloaded this Open Office.org? What is your opinion Should I download it is it worth it?

Question

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is a complete Microsoft Office compatible office suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more.

OpenOffice.org for Free OpenOffice.org is full-featured, available in many languages and works on all major operating systems.

OpenOffice.org can:

read, edit and save to Microsoft Office file formats.

store all of your data in the non-proprietary Open Document Format.

export documents to Acrobat PDF and to Flash.

new add-ons offer blogging, faxing, report builder, smaller file sizes.

Answer 1

I have it - it IS worth it. It DOES do what you want and you CAN export an openoffice doc as an .xls file or a text file as a .doc

Its FREE so you can't go wrong.

Answer 2

Yes. It's quite good. A friend of mine needed to be able to read email that was sent to her in MS Word, and she didn't have it. I got Open Office for her and it worked like a dream. Easy, free and simple interface. Nice.

Answer 3

i did. but i ended up not using it then getting microsoft office  

Answer 4

Advantages: Loads of them not the least being it's free

Disadvantages: none that i can think of

After having forked out my hard earned on a new computer last year, I was to discover that although it came with Ms Works which I find to be adequate it did not have a version of my beloved Microsoft Office. What the heck was I going to do, as frequent readers of my reviews will know I like to write a fair amount of poetry. For this purpose alone there was a bit of urgency about getting a package that was up to the mark for my needs.

I did as most people do these days and I Googled office. Up pops this website offering a free and comprehensive Office package. Yeah in your dreams I thought a free complete package that will do everything and solve my problem. Anyhow I decided on a little stroll to open office.org, I read all the info and got proper genned up on what the score was. To my utter surprise the Goggling had indeed brought me to a site that was offering a complete word processing spreadsheet and office package for a grand total of one download.

The whole process of obtaining a copy of the software took a little less than 7 minutes. There were brief forms to fill in terms and conditions to agree to but nothing absolutely nothing about coughing up some cash for the privilege.

The download and installation procedure is painless and simple.

The software is written and published by Sun Microsystems and is most impressive in it's presentation. It is very similar in performance and look to the familiar Microsoft Office with only a few name changes to distract you from the fact that you are indeed not using MS Office. The package contains four main sub programs these being

1. Open Office Word Processor

Well since this was really the part I was wanting it did not take me long to start using it an acquaint myself with the differences between it and MS Office. The difference are mainly in the layout and names but the performance is almost identical to that of the better known MS Office. There are spellchecker, font changing, margin changing, and all the usual if differently named menu functions at the top of the page.

2. Data

This once again is very similar to the MS Works data base function, but I have only used it on a few occasions. It like the Word program does take a bit of getting used to but it works fine and does the job it was designed to do. I have loaded up a few spreadsheets created in Excel with no problems whatsoever.

3. Spreadsheet

Another great transformation from Open office. This is once again very similar in function to Excel and indeed Excel files can be loaded into the program and later saved as open office files to reduce loading time in the future. I have used this quite frequently and it is another excellent program. It has all the mathematical functions of excel and performs the tasks required very well indeed.

4. Draw

Draw is pretty good but I think this is perhaps the weakest part of the software I find it a little less user friendly than the other sub programs and in fact much prefer the MS Draw function in MS Office or Works, this is not to say this is not a useful program it most definitely is I just found it a little less functional than the other parts.

I know I said there were only four sub parts but there is another part called Math which for the life of me I have not been able to figure out. I know the name should give some kind of hint but poor old me is totally at a loss with this part of the software.

All in all this is a fantastic office package that will keep your documents looking professional and tidy, and best of all is absolutely free. It feels good to use and provides the user with most of the tools they will require to produce great looking documents. So if you are prepared to spend a little time getting used to the differences you will in my opinion not be disapointed with the end results.

The different parts of the software will in most cases be able to load various other formats such as .doc .txt and .rtf and in addition will convert the vast majority of MS Works and MS Office files, so there should be no problems with translations between the various software products. I use Open Office regularly now and it is a fantastic freebie. So if you are in need of a good quality package to do your home office bits and bobs I would very strongly recommend the is excellent package.  

Answer 5

I've used OpenOffice since version 0.912 and am not disappointed at all. I actually use it at work as well. We have Excel workbooks that sometimes get corrupted and cause Excel to crash while opening the workbook. For some odd reason, I can open these workbooks in OpenOffice Calc and then save them back as an Excel workbook and all is well with them.

If you believe you need all of the functionality of Microsoft Office, then by all means pay the $699 retail for it (PLEASE! Don't use an illegal copy!) If you can "make do" with 90% of the functionality of Microsoft Office and want to save some cash, go ahead and download and install OpenOffice.