On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 1:42 AM, Prashob Podikalam <prashoblal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it possible to use all the old microsoft office files available in my > system with Apache open office software? > It is possible. The limits of document fidelity between applications may or may not be meet your operational requirements. Write <-> Word - mostly yes. Content can be read but layout is often a bit different even in simple documents. The difference that is most troubling for me is I find is page margins don't match and then page breaks are in different spots in the text. If there are manual page breaks it is more of a concern because that can result in extra pages in the document. It will have page break from text flow when opened in the alternate application and then another from the manual page break in the source file. Fields and macros I don't have direct experience. Calc <-> Excel - mostly yes. Cells filled with data and simple formulas work well. I have even created spreadsheets in Calc to manage business processes, saved them as .xls, provided to users in other companies who have only Excel, and the logic continues to work. And the reverse, people have provided me Excel files they're trying to "make work", I've made modifications with Calc, returned and the files have been used successfully. Not all functions work. One example I can think of is Excel's subtotal(). I don't have experience trying macros from Excel in Calc. I don't print much from Calc or Excel but I find I get many more unexpected outputs printing with Calc than I do with Excel. Presentation <-> Powerpoint - Limited experiences. Sometimes no issue however I have experienced layout and formatting differences opening a presentation in the application it was not created with. Access - no. There are means to read the data but any forms and application logic must be recreated. This may sound discouraging. Please don't be. I have successfully used a Linux pc and Write <-> Word and Calc <-> to Excel for a stretch of years in a business environment exchanging files daily with people using Windows and MS Office exclusively. The typical documents I encountered in my environment almost never contained elements that required me to switch to MS Office to ensure successful sharing.
