Compatibility MS Office ?

[orx57]

Hello,

I wish to have your opinion on the compatibility of StarOffice with documents MS office. Is the display correct? As it is could publish correctly document under StarOffice to use them with MS office... And conversely ;-) What is the degree of compatibility for every MS's office version? 95, 97, 2000 and XP?

Thank you!

orx57

 

[eusebius]

I can't answer all the questions you raise, but I can tell you that in my organization we keep a copy of StarOffice 5.2 handy because frequently it can open Word and Excel documents that the native Word and Excel programs refuse to open because the files are "corrupted."

For some reason StarOffice never has a problem

We used Office 97 until January, and Office 2000 since January 2001, and have used StarOffice to successfully deal with these file corruption issues under both versions of the Office programs.

--------
eusebius

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

Have you checked Sun's website? Or do they just mention Office 97? Mike Wills
RPG Programmer (but learning Java)

"I am bad at math because God forgot to include math.h into my program!"

 

[d3funct]

I can only tell you that I use StarOffice for all my docs, but since most of the people I work with use M$office I have to make compatable docs. I haven't had any compatablity problems with StarOffice vs. M$office. One thing I have noted, when using StarOffice and looking at a .doc file that has bullets, the bullets don't seem to translate well, you can see that they are in the correct place but they don't look like bullets. This concerned me, but I created a doc in StarOffice with bullets and saved it as a .doc and looked at it in M$office and didn't see a problem. d3funct
zimmer.jon@cfwy.com
The software required `Windows 95 or better', so I installed Linux.

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

So d3funct, I assume you have to specify to save as a Word document (or equivilant file type). Correct? Mike Wills
RPG Programmer (but learning Java)

"I am bad at math because God forgot to include math.h into my program!"

 

[d3funct]

Yes, when saving a file you need to go to the box below the filename which is I believe "filetype" or some such. Click on the arrow to drop down the filetypes and choose the correct filetype for windows. You'll also have to either give the filename a .doc extension or you can click the checkbox at the bottom of the dialog to have extensions added automatically. d3funct
zimmer.jon@cfwy.com
The software required `Windows 95 or better', so I installed Linux.

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

Cool...I shall have to try this for my class...I may just have to switch my office program. ;-) Mike Wills
RPG Programmer (but learning Java)

"I am bad at math because God forgot to include math.h into my program!"

 

[Enigma666]

From what I hear, Star Office is compatible with just about most Word and Excel documents from '97 and on.

 

[rbhokse]

I've used msoffice-2000 and star office 5.2 i have so far not face any problem with files of '*.doc' type.

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

My only grip about it right now is that stupid desktop thing. I know this is changed in 6.0. So perhaps I will be looking at that here shortly... Mike Wills
RPG Programmer (but learning Java)

"I am bad at math because God forgot to include math.h into my program!"

 

[jagsrao]

Hi,

Let me also add few points about StarOffice 5.2 We have a major headache in the office. Couple of them use Staroffice and rest use Office 2000. We need to create lot of Quality documents with numbering. We are facing problems in those. When the document is opened in Office 2000, all the formating and alignment is lost. On top of that, the bullets are misplaced. Sometimes the no. of pages also gets changed. Any solutions ? One more thing I want to add is that StarOffice hogs up memory.

 

[Red007]

I am also a user of star office but when i installed it on a new PC with WinXP Pro OS, problem occur. you cant open it anymore..... the error is this "soffice.exe has generated errors and will be closed by windows".you will need to restart the program.then i follow instructions.I've restarted it ten times and nothing happens...

Does anyone can give me a suugestion regarding to what i've encountered?

 

[BaconMakinWabbit]

I would suggest that if you want to use SO in production enviorment then you really should use 6.0. They made it a commercial product so that companies who wished an alternative to M$ Office could switch and be sure that they are getting a product with support.
I run 6.0 on WinXP as well as Linux and I have not had any problems so far. They got rid of the stupid desktop thingy and it seems very compatible. The things that aren't are small like the bullets but I really can't complain and when I can get it for $100 CAD retail I am finding it very much a better product.
Remember however that SO is Java based and as such it will take up more memory as it needs a JVM to operate. Both my systems have 512 RAM and I notice no difference between SO and MS O.
The fact that I can link it to Oracle or any JDBC or ODBC type data source makes it hugely powerful. Also the XML file formats are going to allow my company to automate a lot of documentation issues within our company. We will be able to create applications that translate the docs to HTML on the fly and also allow us to standardize office documents by providing address, client, equipment, sales database tables that SO can link to.
I love this program and I can't wait tilt he next version.