| OpenOffice, MS Office -- peaceful co-existence? |
May 03, 2006
OpenOffice.org has come a long way in accommodating Microsoft Office's format quirks. Still, today, it's possible to create even simple documents in one that look awful in the other.
Solveig Haugland, over at TechTarget, provides some answers on how to address some of the basics of Office and OpenOffice. I like them. I like them a lot.
My biggest reason is that Haugland focuses on ways to automate making the two word processors' documents work and play well with each other. Many of these suggestions make good sense, even if you're never going to open a Word doc in Writer and vice-versa.
I've always been surprised at how few users pick up the basics of using styles and formatting, despite the fact that styles make even minor editing changes so much easier in the long run. Haugland shows how minding your style and formatting p's and q's also goes a long way to make these word processors compatible.
Haugland's article only touches the surface of inter-Office compatibility, but even that is enough to solve such a basic problem as keeping a document's indents straight between the two programs without the same fonts.
The article also includes a link to what's meant to be a sample chapter from Haugland's forthcoming book, OpenOffice.org 2.x Resource Kit. Unfortunately, there's no sample chapter there, just a description of the book.
Even so, if you, like many others, see yourself using both OpenOffice and Office on your office's desktops, you should consider getting this book.
I'm not big on application books like this one. Still, just the taste I got of sensible advice clearly given in Haugland's brief article has me looking forward to seeing the book.
If it lives up to its promise, it will be the "Must Have" OpenOffice book of 2006.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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