Hello - I am writing to every e-mail address I could find on your Contact Us/Help page on your web site. I teach computers part time at two small private elementary schools - and one of them couldn't afford the licenses of MS Office, so we've been using Open Office. I found it to lacking in all the things that would make it easier for these younger kids to learn the application, like Clip art, page borders, etc.
That aside, I am writing to tell you of my latest issue. I usually use MS Word at home to write up my lesson plans, but last week, I updated the page in Open Office Writer and saved it in the same format (MS Word), not OO Writer. When I tried to open it today, in MS Word (my home computer) - none of the text in my table is there - 99% of it has dissappeared! The onlything left was my headers and 29 blank pages (it was only one page when I saved it). I had to download Open Office on my home computer, where I was able to open the Word document in Writer. When I copied the table into a new Word document, it was all messed up - the rows and columns were not the size they appeared in Writer (or the original Word document), so I spent about 30-45 minutes to fix one of my lesson plans so that it look like I had it originally. I have 4 total to fix. There was a one-page plan for each week (Jan. 25th and Feb1st), and each had 3 columns (one for the class period times, and one for each day that I teach: Tuesday and Thursday and the other was Wednesday and Friday), and one school had 10 rows and the other had 11. Now I have to fix the other two, and I don't really have 3-4 hours to waste fixing this. It's been a struggle with the kids, but I have learned my lesson - I will never use Open Office for any of my personal and professional documents. Kim Walsh (P.S. I didn't register the version we use in school as we are hoping to be able to afford MS Office next year and didn't want to be part of any feedback study, or receive any e-mails or spam.)
