Discussion on:

Five tips for migrating from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice

Thanks Jack,

The Find Text box adds to productivity. This is so much better than the "Find & Replace" button as this has the additional functionality of 'Find Previous'.

The context specific menu on right-click is very "feature-packed" and I love the extensions. My favorite extension in LibreOffice is gdocs that helps me directly upload to Google Docs.

Personalized menus: for those interested, Right click on an icon and then select/ de-select the particular icon button you want from "Visble Buttons".

Ubuntu 11.04 latest daily build has LibreOffice, so that's another great reason to get familiar with it.

There is just one thing, Open office and libre office have no analog for Outlook.

Shouldnt one of these tips be suggesting an email client to replace it?

We have started to move across to Google email and Calendar. We use The Bat for storage and in-office use as we do not fully trust Google and we want to keep emails "forever" and also it is a VERY powerful email client.

Thomas

Another free Office app. Starting to remind me of Linux. All these free versions - each with a very, very small chunk of the market.

Open Office, Symphony, LibreOffice, ...

Regarding #3, this is the biggesat issue. Very few MS Office clones have files that can open up correctly [other than a plain text document for example].

Another issue is that you will always be saving to the MS Office formats because few will use this application. Hopefully it opens MS Office files - otherwise you are scr?wed.

I have been using OO for the past two years and it opens and saves to MS Office, including docx, xlsx, etc. My clients are using MS Office and have no idea I'm using OO. All but the most complex formatting translates seamlessly. Quite honestly, I have not seen issues with over 99% of MS files.I have not been working with Access / Base so I cannot speak to compatibility there but Power Point / Impress also works well.

Does exist a LibreOffice for mac version?

There is a PPC and Intel Version listed under Other way to download LibreOffice, the productivity suite on this Web Page.

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/

Col

Is your Apple PC an older PowerPC based machine or newer Intel based machine (if in the last three or more years; probably Intel).

Peronally, I'd start with the Intel download an watch for an error similar to "PPC version required" unless you know it's an older Apple PC which may be PowerPC based.

(edit): left in place encase it helps others but I had misread the thread when posting originally.

Apple Mac users also have the option of NeoOffice. An OS X specific port of OpenOffice. It can be found at http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

I really do NOT like the personalized menus.
This is a hinderance rather than a help.

The Personalized Menus should work backwards.
Show everything in the beginning and then slowly start to hide what you do not use.

Starting off with 70% of the features hidden is a great way to foster conspiracy and keep typical users in the dark about great features.

Microsoft realized this was as bad idea and as evidence, I give you the ribbon in Office2007. Now almost no "menu" item is hidden.

a couple of things are holding me back.

1. The majority of my clients are MS users so I need to be sure there is absolute compatibility both ways.

2. Integration with, or replacement of Outlook. Most open email readers that I have found are just that, email readers.

Outlook is integrated with contacts, calendar and tasks (which includes billing) and can send directly to One Note. Is there a FOSS that can replace Outlook 2007 and One Note???

If you require Exchange support then you may be stuck with Outlook; I believe you can buy licenses for it separate from the overall Office license though which may help.

If you just require PIM support; look at Thunderbird plus the plugins or Sunbird (what Tbird+plugins comes close to). You can start with portableapps to see if it does what you like; delete the dir with no lingering mess if it doesn't.

http://portableapps.com/apps

No I am not using exchange.
I'll take a closer look at some of these to see if they will fit my needs.

I haven't found anything that comes close to One Note.

Appreciate the link. Thank you.

Two individual major MS apps cost about the same as the Office 2010 Business and Home Suite. OneNote is less expensive by itself, but if you need OneNote and Outlook, the entire suite isn't much more expensive than the two apps.

This is true for both retail licenses and Open License pricing.

I switch between OOcalc and Excel depending on where the falshdrive is plugged in. In Excel, formula for the local sheet specify only the cell address (c1:c2). In Oocalc, formula for the local sheet specify the sheet (thistab!c1:c2). Excel accepts the sheet specification if a formula reaches to another sheet but not when it reaches for another cell on the current sheet. This means every workbook saved under Oocalc then opened under Excel requires a search/replace to correct cell formula.

Is there a setting in Oocalc to remove the sheet name when formula point to a cell on the current sheet. Alternatively, can Excel be told to accept sheet names for pointers to current sheet cells?


I'd also like to see Oocalc accept pasted dates as date values. In excel I can past a column of dates (mm/dd/yyyy) and it takes them as date values even if the column is not formated for date values. In Oocalc, my paste of dates drops as text strings even if the column is formated for date values.

(oddly, Office 2k3 under Win7 ignores data values also though winXP/Office2k3 is fine)

Oocalc here referring to OpenOffice but including LibreOffice since the fork is still close.

Good! I hate them. The first thing I do on a new Office install is turn that off.

It's ironic, actually. Decades ago MS was at the forefront of GUI and usability design. Their CUA really did make sense and was one of the main reasons Windows caught on so quickly. Now, however, every new release of any MS product includes a new, steep learning curve because they are always changing the UI. It drives me crazy.

I still write my programs by hand with straight API calls using the old guidelines and no one ever has to study a manual for days to learn how to use them.

"By default, LibreOffice will save in its native formats. As you might expect, Microsoft Office will not know what to do with these open formats. Make sure your users know theyll need to save in a format that Microsoft Office can read, if theyre sharing documents with Office users."

This is not right. LO, like OO.o before it, uses the Open Document formats (.odt, .ods, etc) as defaults. These are open, non-proprietary standards, not "its native formats".

Office uses its own proprietary, closed (and IMHO inferior) formats such as .doc and .docx as defaults. However, it is perfectly capable of reading ODF documents - it just doesn't advertise this to keep people locked in.

Saying that LO is using its own thing and should conform to Microsoft is exactly backwards - LO is using the standard (to the extent one exists) and Microsoft is the deviant.

I'm not sure who was the intended audience for this article. IMHO, those reading this article have been using OO or are already familiar with LO. For instance, the commentary about .ODT vs. .DOC was more interesting than the article. At least the article does introduce LibreOffice.

I haven't used MS Office extensively since about 2004, but I'd appreciate an article that discusses the differences between LibreOffice and MS Office 2010. Why do so many users think they must use MS Office instead of LibreOffice (or Open Office). What in can't be done in LibreOffice that can be done in MS Office? Can LibreOffice documents, spreadsheets, presentations, database records be imported into existing MS Office databases or spreadsheets, etc.?

BTW, I like LibreOffice and the interface better than I liked OpenOffice's interface. I haven't noticed any gotchas using LO from using OO.

The recurring issue is file compatibility. It's supposed to be getting better, but for a company that lives on files sent to or from customers and clients, "better" isn't good enough. Some people, as an author above noted, can get by with "better"; others can't.

Complain and moan to your heart's content, but the MS file formats are the de facto standard. If/when the OO or LO suites can handle them perfectly or until MS Office users stop saving files in the Office native formats, MS Office will be in big trouble; until that time, it's likely to stay a major, if not the major, productivity suite.

This article is incorrect when it says Microsoft Office cannot open LibreOffice native format. Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010 can open the native ODT OpenOffice format. And on Windows 7, Wordpad also supports ODT. Microsoft has been fully onboard with XML support since Office 2007.