On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 10:56 +0100, Russell Kent wrote: > Hallo Everyone, > > I downloaded Open Office about a month ago. Since then I have spent > very many frustrating hours trying to use it.
I do hope you also picked up one of the user guides from http://documentation.openoffice.org/ By not doing so I am certain you added to your frustration. > > The help files are extremely unhelpful. If I try to follow them, I get > nowhere. There is no distinction in the help file of which aspect of > Open Office the help advice refers to, particularly tables in the writer > programme and not the spreadsheet programme. I would agree that Help can be unhelpful but using it is explained in the guides to make it easier to use. > > If I contact open office, they tell me to contact the users group, where > I am bombarded with at least one hundred messages a day, none of them of > any use to me. Of course, the users list is the place for presenting your questions to the volunteers who support this Open Source Software project. Had you contacted us with your concerns early on, I am certain we could have helped. Yes the volume is high but then our users number in the millions which results in many messages. In other words OOo is not a commercial enterprize and none of us get paid. Were you expecting paid support? If yes there are a number of consultants who will do this for a fee. Please see http://bizdev.openoffice.org/ for the consultants directory for your area. > > Say what you want about Microsoft Office, at least a non-techie can use > it to produce things they want to. You, of course, may purchase MSO. (At least I hope you purchase it) OOo is offered as an excellent alternative to MSO. I take it then that you didn't get any of the available documentation. Well it is there to help naive users. There is even a migration guide to help MSO users to become familiar with OOo. > > If Open Office is progress to a point where it is a realistic > alternative, these issues have to be addressed. > > Russ Kent > I think it is a very real alternative. Particularly its ability to import and export foreign formats. I also like that there are many fully supported languages with more to come than with MS. And much, much more. If you would care to enumerate the areas with which you had difficulty, I, for one, would be willing to help you clear up the misconceptions you have. One last thing, OpenOffice.org is _NOT_ an MSO clone. Nor is it intended to be so. If that is what you were expecting then I am not surprized you are disappointed. -- Documentation Co-Lead PLEASE - keep list traffic on the list. Email sent directly to me may be ignored utterly. "Dinna meddle wi' things ye ken nuthin' aboot!" J.Herriot --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
