Compatibility with Microsoft Office

[nathandev]

To summarize: OpenOffice is not 100% compatible with Microsoft Office.
The exact level of compatibility varies upon the type and complexity of the task.

Thank You RusselB, Thanks for saving my time.

[nathandev]

If you will regularly be interchanging documents of importance, such as business documents, with MS Office users and they are for editing by both parties, then acquire and use MS Office. There can be formatting differences and macros will not necessarily run interchangeably.

I would be very grateful to you if you just mention the files format after interchanging. I think there is a possibility to change the file formatting by using some tools. I need the formats when interchanged.
Also how do you handle such a big data for interchanging?
Thank you.

[RoryOF]

.doc formats are rendered reasonably well, .docx are not so well supported; besides, OpenOffice cannot Save to .docx format.

You can try out some test files - it may be that you will find the OO/MS Word interchange satisfactory, but as I said, if the files and their formatting are of importance you should get MS Office.

[John_Ha]

See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for an explanation.

[nathandev]

.doc formats are rendered reasonably well, .docx are not so well supported; besides, OpenOffice cannot Save to .docx format.

You can try out some test files - it may be that you will find the OO/MS Word interchange satisfactory, but as I said, if the files and their formatting are of importance you should get MS Office.

Your explanation was satisfactory and i appreciate you for your time.
As i am new to the community, hopeful to learn and get command like you do have.

[nathandev]

See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for an explanation.

I will surely keep visiting these links time to time but is there any summarized guideline about Open Office in general?

[John_Ha]

Not really - it's why I wrote the tutorial. MS Word keeps on adding function, the format of .doc files keeps on changing, Microsoft sets up MS Word so that it does not use strict OOXML so things keep changing all the time.

[Villeroy]

You can not be fully compatible with something that refuses to be incompatible because of incompatibility as a busines model. OpenOffice has been created to overcome this problem by introducing a free and open standard. Of course OpenOffice can open a lot of foreign documents and LibreOffice does this job even better. But then you should work with the native file format of the program you are using. You would do the same with MS Office or with any other software producing documents, media, interactions.

[thomas12N]

Yep, it's all about issues from Microsoft Word's side. They should create something like addons, I think, for resolving such issues..

[RyanWad82]

So, there are no options to open text from OpenOffice in Word without breaking?

[Zizi64]

So, there are no options to open text from OpenOffice in Word without breaking?

I can repeat it only:

There is NOT (never was and never will be) 100% compatibility between the different file formats, and between the different types of the office suites.

The International Standard ODF formats provide you with long-term compatibility.

The MS Office file formats have many-many subversions, which are not even compatible with each other.

If you must work with MSO file formats or with the MSO anyway, then you must buy MSO.

[keme]

So, there are no options to open text from OpenOffice in Word without breaking?

Well, the typical OpenOffice Writer document complies to a published standard format (the Open Document Format, or ODF). We have no influence on how Microsoft choose to handle files submitting to this standard. So if Microsoft products "break" your text created in OpenOffice, perhaps ask the Microsoft experts. (Good luck with that!)

Most commonly, content and basic structure is handled fine, but meticulous layout suffers. As I have repeated ad nauseaum in these forums, Microsoft Office and OpenOffice subscribe to different "schools of typography", which (among other things) treats spacing differently and has different ways to deal with marginalia (page headers/footers). Common consequences: Running text is reflowed, sometimes altering the page count. Tables filling an entire page (like what you would use to make a fillable form) may be significantly shifted, or split to new page (sometimes ruining a form setup).

If you have examples where the "breaking" you mentioned renders your files unusable or significantly degraded to a recipient using Word, you could ask a specific question in the forum, on "how best to adapt this so it can be used in Word". You should brace yourself for the "ask Microsoft" response, but then at least there is something to work with, and many of the helpers here have access to multiple Office suites on their computer. (For myself at time of writing: MSO365 Pro+, WPS free, LibreOffice 6.4.4, OpenOffice 4.1.8, and iWork "something" on a different workstation when I have to.)

• If you want a tool to enable working with documents in a structured and predictable fashion, use OpenOffice (or LibreOffice).
• If you want the highest degree of Microsoft compatibility, use Microsoft Office.
• If you want the highest degree of Microsoft compatibility but don't want to pay the premium price MS is asking (or can't bother to relate to their licensing terms), use WPS Office.

Either way, there are advantages and tradeoffs.