Thursday, June 01, 2006
The Open Office Experiment
So I have a fresh, new notebook computer. And I am getting ready to insert the MS Office CD, when I stopped myself cold.
Why should I?
Sure, I do a lot of word processing and spreadsheet work. And regular readers know that I use PowerPoint a whole bunch in my line of work.
But why not become more literate, I wondered. Why not download OpenOffice.org...and skip the MS Suite altogether?
After all, I can still open up and edit all my old Word, PowerPoint, and Excel data files with the Open Office Suite. And I can save them as .doc, .xls, and .ppt files, too.
Plus, I can save them as PDF files. Microsoft products don't do that.
The Open Office products seem to be more powerful. And even better, they are free.
So here it is, June 1. MS Office is still happily loaded on my desktop. But for the month of June, I will (try) to keep the Microsoft Suite -- including PowerPoint -- off of my laptop.
I expect that it will be a little like visiting England -- they speak the same language over there, but with a different accent. And like England, I also expect that I will get used to Open Office very quickly.
Heck, I might even more fully appreciate some of the subtle differences. Here is to the month of June and a month of Open Office experimentation.... ¶ 6/01/2006 03:10:00 PM
So I have a fresh, new notebook computer. And I am getting ready to insert the MS Office CD, when I stopped myself cold.
Why should I?
Sure, I do a lot of word processing and spreadsheet work. And regular readers know that I use PowerPoint a whole bunch in my line of work.
But why not become more literate, I wondered. Why not download OpenOffice.org...and skip the MS Suite altogether?
After all, I can still open up and edit all my old Word, PowerPoint, and Excel data files with the Open Office Suite. And I can save them as .doc, .xls, and .ppt files, too.
Plus, I can save them as PDF files. Microsoft products don't do that.
The Open Office products seem to be more powerful. And even better, they are free.
So here it is, June 1. MS Office is still happily loaded on my desktop. But for the month of June, I will (try) to keep the Microsoft Suite -- including PowerPoint -- off of my laptop.
I expect that it will be a little like visiting England -- they speak the same language over there, but with a different accent. And like England, I also expect that I will get used to Open Office very quickly.
Heck, I might even more fully appreciate some of the subtle differences. Here is to the month of June and a month of Open Office experimentation.... ¶ 6/01/2006 03:10:00 PM
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Glad to see more people make the changeover!
Let us readers know how it turns out.
Merijn
Let us readers know how it turns out.
Merijn
# posted by 
: 2:06 AM, June 02, 2006
: 2:06 AM, June 02, 2006
Great to hear you're experimenting with OpenOffice.org! Impress is a lot better in this 2.0 (October '05) version.
You can of course use any of your Microsoft Office templates in OpenOffice.org. Convert them to OOo format (File > Wizards > Document Converter, or just open each and save as an Impress template), then put them in the OpenOffice.org template repository. You can do this a few ways. One is just pointing to that directory under Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths, and select the Templates line. Or open each and choose File > Templates > Save, name it, select a category, and click OK.
Have fun with it!
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You can of course use any of your Microsoft Office templates in OpenOffice.org. Convert them to OOo format (File > Wizards > Document Converter, or just open each and save as an Impress template), then put them in the OpenOffice.org template repository. You can do this a few ways. One is just pointing to that directory under Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths, and select the Templates line. Or open each and choose File > Templates > Save, name it, select a category, and click OK.
Have fun with it!
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