Re: [tlug] OpenOffice.org/MS-Word

["Jonathan Q" <jq@example.com>]

On 2/6/2003, "Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon" <ronfaxon@example.com> wrote:

>Precisely!  The company I'm working at (not for much longer) has
mind-bogglingly
>consistent problems with the formatting of MS-Word files ("Change the
process!" I
>have repeatedly requested... in vain).

It's important for everyone to be on the same version.  The (at the time)
parent of my former employer had a corporate IT standard of Windows 2000
w/Office 2000, and the whole company had it.  File compatiblity problems
were not an issue b/c everything was an Office 2K document.

>Yes and no.  They are not bogged down with a lot of oddball formatting,
but also
>I'm talking about saving things in the native OpenOffice format, and
opening the
>file on both ends with OpenOffice - so MicroMuck doesn't enter the picture
at all

That's an ideal situation, but most companies have a large store of MS
Office documents that need to be converted reliably.  Word documents should
come out looking like they did before, and (especially) Excel spreadsheets
should look like that did before.  Something that uglifies your Word
document so you have to touch it up is a nuisance (a really big nuisance if
it does it to all of them), but if it borks your spreadsheet - especially
if that borkage features the introduction of bad data or affects
calculations so they produce wrong results or put them in the wrong place -
that's a very serious business problem.  Also, in many companies they have
customers who send them MS Office documents and/or request documents in
that format.  You have to be able to comply.

Another thing OO needs is a set of (reliable) mass conversion tools.  I
know of a certain company with about 25 employees that might actually be
open to a fully Linux-based network if they had something that could
reliably import/export office files, and something that would do it in
batch mode would be ideal. They have hundreds of them - probably thousands
- sitting on a W2K Server machine.  Converting one at a time would be a
PITA.

Jonathan