OO and Office 2003 comparison

[skooter1121]

Welcome beginner. Please answer all of the questions below which may provide information necessary to answer your question.
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Which version of OpenOffice.org are you using? 2.3.1
What Operating System (version) are you using? XPPro
What is your question or comment?

From : Stephen, IT Manager

I have a new General Manager who want us to switch to MS Office 2003 from OO. (After I've trained the staff in OO! and the $$ cost for 10 licenses) He states there are too many incompatibilities between OO 2.3.1 and Office 2003. Particularity between Calc and Excel. (He could not give any specific examples.)

Has anyone prepared a summary of incompatibilities / differences / summaries between the two products?

I've looked around but have not found anything 'official' looking enough. A few spreadsheets he sent to me had wrong formulas. (it appears that Office 2003, esp. Excel, does hidden auto-correction that figures out the wrong formulas).

Any help / guidance / assistance would be greatly appreciated. (He wants to take mucho $$$ from my 2008 budget so I'll need to send back the 30'' in TV monitor I have ordered.)

THANX -Stephen

ALSO: Looking for a DVD (not jewel case or circular label) cover template for 8.5x11 paper, not A4.

[Dave]

A few spreadsheets he sent to me had wrong formulas.

HOW were they wrong? mistyped, misspelled? gave erroneous results? .... Do they work in one spreadsheet and not the other?

In your position, I'd first ask the boss if he would consider sticking with that which works ...if it indeed works. It doesn't matter for the present if there are differences so long as those differences don't impact on what you are doing. Secondly. He IS the boss, and if he wants to spend company money on one suite rather than another, that's his prerogative. It is you who must accommodate him, and learn to use that software. If MS wouldn't do the work then you'd have an argument. Otherwise you don't. I'd have no compunction against using MS software if someone else payed for it.

I doubt if any comparison would be comprehensive enough, or "official" enough. Time for an adult decision: Bite the bullet, do your job, collect your salary, and go home happy and play with your kids. It's a short life and there are bigger problems to worry about. The worst that will happen is that you'll become competent in both.

David.

[Villeroy]

Main difference between Excel (since 2003 I believe) and any other spreadsheet is the automatic conversion from numeric text to numbers, which I would consider as a bug. Excel treats "1.234" just like number 1.234. In another locale environment the same conversion evaluates to 1,234.