Newbie Questions

[rharris40]

I work for a not for profit mental health and substance abuse organization with limited resources. Just from general information it appears this software might work for us. Could someone assist me with the following questions:

If I have templates and macros written in office 2003 will the templates and macros load on openoffice?

In creating templates and macros how similar is openoffice to microsoft office? Is there alot of new learning or does knowledge of Microsoft Office easily translate to open office?

Thanks for any assistance that can be provided

Rodney

[keme]

Templates will load, but as the use of advanced features (text positioning, fields, form controls, macros) increases, so does the probability that the template will not behave as expected. If you want to use templates, you should save them as Open Office template files.
Basic formatting will be rendered virtually unchanged.
Macros will most likely not work.

As for the learning curve:
The static content of templates (text, objects), as well as fields, mostly work the same.
Macro recording is available.
When writing macros, you'll find that most objects and methods are in different places and/or have different names. The UNO object interface is still somewhat elusive to me, but then again, I haven't put much effort into learning OOo basic programming. It seems that ample documentation is at hand.