[Solved] Opening MS Office files with OOo

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sshla2001
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Joined: Thu Jan 10, 2008 2:32 pm

[Solved] Opening MS Office files with OOo

Post by sshla2001 »

CAN I OPEN A MICROSOFT OFFICE FILES USING OPEN OFFICE?

Title Edited. A descriptive title for posts helps others who are searching for solutions and increases the chances of a reply. (Hagar, Moderator).
Last edited by Hagar Delest on Sat Jan 21, 2012 7:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: tagged [Solved].
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ccornell
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Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2007 7:21 am

Re: FIRST TIME USER

Post by ccornell »

Welcome to OpenOffice.org. :)

First, a friendly comment. In public forums and mailing lists, typing in all capitals is considered shouting. Some people will ignore everything you type if you type is all in capitals.

To answer your question, yes, OpenOffice.org can open Microsoft Office files. You can also save documents created with OpenOffice.org in Microsoft Office formats.

There are some exceptions though:
  • Microsoft Publisher - There are no applications that can open .PUB files except Microsoft Publisher. Microsoft does not even provide a viewer for Publisher files. There are two workarounds you can use to view .PUB files.
    • If you are still using Windows, you can download the complete version of Microsoft Publisher from the Microsoft website, and install it in Demo mode. This will allow you to open and view, but not edit (after the Demo expires) the Publisher files.
    • If you are not using Windows or do not want to download a huge program just to view a file, you can use an online PDF converter such as http://www.pdfonline.com/ to convert .PUB files to PDF.
  • The latest OOXML file format (DOCX, XLSX, etc) from Microsoft Office 2007 - This new format is not yet supported in the main OpenOffice.org. Some variations on OpenOffice.org such as the Novell edition, and NeoOffice (for Mac) can open these files. Support to open this new Microsoft Office file format is coming in a future version of the main OpenOffice.org.
  • VBA Macros - these macros may or may not be able to be converted to work in OpenOffice.org. If you use the Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org same of these macros will work (I am told). I do not know if NeoOffice (for Mac) can handle VBA Macros or not.
openSUSE 11.4, KDE4.6 with OpenOffice.org 3.3
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foxcole
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Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Re: FIRST TIME USER

Post by foxcole »

You might be interested in the Getting Started Guide and the Migration Guide, both of which you can find in the link to PDF manuals in my signature, below. These describe in some detail what is and is not possible in working with MS Office documents.

Please keep two things in mind while you're considering OOo:
1. MS Office formats are not completely compatible with themselves from one version to the next, so you are likely to find some things that also don't work well in OOo.
2. MS Office formats are closed, meaning the source code is secret. Developers of programs that work with MS Office files are forced to guess how the Office programs work. So, you are likely to find some things that don't work well in OOo.

But don't let those scare you off. I work with MS Office documents all the time, in a corporate environment, and have had no problems. Even complex documents have translated nicely between the two products.

Well, I take that back; I've had one problem---I can't currently use Excel pivot reports in Calc. (But improvements are coming in 2.4, so I'm looking forward to trying it out.)

And I'll second ccornell's note: please do not type in all capital letters. It is very difficult to read. Do you have a reason other than personal preference for doing so? I know of one user in a different forum who typed in all caps because he had vision problems and caps were easier for him to see. But there are other solutions, so feel free to ask. You'd be surprised at how helpful people are and at what they can come up with.
Cheers!
---Fox

OOo 3.2.0 Portable, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
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