kwalsh2004 ha scritto:
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
Hallo,
this is a user-to-user support mailing list, so you're not writing
directly to the creators of OpenOffice.org, like you would if you were
writing to Microsoft support regarding MS Office (besides, that would be
paid support, while this is voluntary help).
I hope you'll find helpful answers here.
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.
I've been using OpenOffice.org for several years now, both at home and
at work.
It's not meant to be a "word processing for kids" application, so maybe
it's not suitable for 6 or 7 years old kids, but I think 9-10 years old
kids should be able to use it without problems.
I can't see what page borders have to do with cliparts. Also, you
suggest that OOo is lacking many features besides "page borders" and
"cliparts" that would make it suitable for kids. Perhaps you could list
other "kids-friendly" features that you'd like to see in OOo.
Page borders, whatever this means, are fully supported in OOo.
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
May I suggest you try OOo at home, too ? That would have two main
advantages:
1) same file format at home and at school - no interoperability issues
2) you learn OOo on your own so you can better manage its usage in the
classroom.
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).
First let me clarify one important thing: there is no such "ms word"
document format. Each MS Office version has its very own file format.
Try to save a MS Word 2003 document in its native file format and open
it with MS Office 97 or 2000. If the document is non-trivial, you'll
likely have problems. Or worst, save it in .docx (2007) format and you
probably won't be able to open it at all even with MS Office 2003.
OOo, on the other hand, adopts the ODF file format, which is an ISO
standard. A new version of OOo doesn't force you to upgrade. You can
also have different OOo versions and excange documents between them
without any problems (IME).
Coming to your issue, you shoud tell the exact version of MS Office and
OpenOffice you used, and the exact "doc" file format you saved the
Writer document as (as you probably noticed, there are multiple "doc"
formats available in the Save As dialog).
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.
I understand your frustration. I had some similar issues with "legacy"
MS Office 2000 Word documents at work (not written by me) that I tried
to convert to ODF. The workflow was simple: open the document in OOo
Writer, fix any layout issues and save it in ODF format. A total mess!
The end result for me was: keep the docs in MS Word format as long as I
need them; use OOo Writer for any new work; if needed, rewrite from
scratch in OOo Writer.
Why ? In my experience the problem was not OOo nor, for all its
shortcomings, MS Word. The "legacy" documents were in fact written so
badly that they should've been fixed with MS Word in the first place.
So my advice is: if you encounter interoperability issues, don't just
throw OOo off, remember you have three objects involved: MS Word, OOo,
the document you're trying to convert.
I also suggest you to always try to use the latest version of OOo: IME
interoprability gets better with each new version.
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.)
I registered almost every copy of OOo I installed, and never _ever_
received any spam from Sun Microsystems, the OOo website or anyone else.
So you can safely register OOo, if you wish, without fear of being spammed.
You should also have noticed that the registration request is very
"polite", so to speak: you can just click "I don't want to register" and
never be bothered by that issue again (I can't help but think about that
other software's "let me be sure for 1000th time that you didn't steal
me" feature...)
It would be interesting to know how much your school will spend in MS
Office licenes. Maybe those money could be spent in OOo training courses
for the teachers...
You should also consider that by using MS Office at school, you force
the kids' parents to spend money to purchase MS Office licenses. Thus
they pay twice: once directly to purchase the software for home use,
once because their tax money are used by school to purchase the licenses
for school use... by the same kids.
By using OOo, instead, nobody has to pay for Office licenses. Thousands
of dollars saved.
Also, MS Office doesn't run on Linux. Could be a non-issue for you, but
maybe for some parents it is.
HTH
Marcello Romani
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