Page 1 of 3

[Solved] Is OpenOffice 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 7:40 pm
by se224141
 Edit: This old discussion has been marked solved. The answer to the question is:
No, it is not 100% compatible; never was; never will be.
The topic is locked. If you have a specific question, open your own topic.
-- MrProgrammer, forum moderator, 2021-02-14 
I find it is not. Some documents created in openoffice doesn't properly open in MS office and also vice versa. I just have normal setting and save the file as .doc. Is there anything special that I have to do?

Re: Is openoffice 100% compatible with MS office?

Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 7:56 pm
by RoryOF
No. It is as it is; it can open many MS Office documents correctly, but not all. If you _must_ have 100% MS Office compliance, _buy_ MS Office.

Re: Is openoffice 100% compatible with MS office?

Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 8:01 pm
by TheGurkha
Until recently the .doc, .xls and other Microsoft binary formats were a locked proprietary secret and so the OOo developers had to basically reverse engineer them, so it isn't a surprise that these types of incompatibility arise every so often.

On saying that, apart from complex tables, I don't usually see anything that doesn't get translated between .odt and .doc.

Re: Is openoffice 100% compatible with MS office?

Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 8:06 pm
by floris v
RoryOF wrote:No. It is as it is; it can open many MS Office documents correctly, but not all. If you _must_ have 100% MS Office compliance, _buy_ MS Office.
+1 Same works for MS Office, by the way, don't regard it as a stand-in for some other package. You only kid yourself.
TheGurkha wrote:Until recently the .doc, .xls and other Microsoft binary formats were a locked proprietary secret and so the OOo developers had to basically reverse engineer them, so it isn't a surprise that these types of incompatibility arise every so often.
Don't forget that programmers aren't infallible. Some flaws in conversion are just bugs.

Re: Is openoffice 100% compatible with MS office?

Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 8:09 pm
by TheGurkha
floris v wrote:Don't forget that programmers aren't infallible. Some flaws in conversion are just bugs.
Don't I know it. I run a development team!

Re: Is openoffice 100% compatible with MS office?

Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 8:54 pm
by se224141
RoryOF wrote:No. It is as it is; it can open many MS Office documents correctly, but not all. If you _must_ have 100% MS Office compliance, _buy_ MS Office.
I just detected this in my cv that I did from a resume template in openoffice. It is just few formatting that caused problem. I also did a presentation from openoffice and detected the same.

Your suggestion to buy MS Office is too simplistic. Right thing would be to improve it so that it becomes the industry standard.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS office?

Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 9:03 pm
by floris v
Look, little formatting inconsistencies are to be expected; there is no such thing as an industry standard for software, a pity, as that allows MS to play its monopoly game rather successfully. In the past governments didn't interfere with the software industry because at first it was all for small and big business and not for consumers, but it's time the governments wake up and become aware that by now consumers suffer by the absence of an industry standard.

Re: Is openoffice 100% compatible with MS office?

Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 9:48 pm
by Hagar Delest
se224141 wrote:Your suggestion to buy MS Office is too simplistic. Right thing would be to improve it so that it becomes the industry standard.
OOo is already using an ISO standard for its file format: ODF. It has been released several years ago and it insures that your documents will be readable in the future, even if OOo disappears. Its documentation is fully available and constantly improved by a group (OASIS) with some of the big players (IBM, Oracle/Sun, ...).

MS Office still sticks to proprietary formats, not fully documented and containing bugs that are not fixed. Even if they say that they are opening their minds to interoperability, they won't do it in order to keep the vendor lock-in policy and keep their users.

So right thing is not to spend energy on trying to be compatible with something that refuses to be compatible with anything else and that isn't a standard at all. It's the most used application, it doesn't mean it's the best (safety of your data point of view).

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 2:51 pm
by FrankFonti
If I receive an e-mail with an excel attachement will I be able to open it if I have OO ??

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 4:53 pm
by Hagar Delest
Yes. But it doesn't seem that it will work as expected, especially if there are macros.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2010 10:49 pm
by cindy5522
Could you dumb it down a little please? I am not very computer literate. When I email my resume, created in Open Office, it opens as jibberish on the other end. I sent it to a friend with a Mac, and she could open it. What do I need to do so that potential employers can open my resume, if I don't know what system they are using? Thank you

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2010 10:51 pm
by TheGurkha
cindy5522 wrote:Could you dumb it down a little please? I am not very computer literate. When I email my resume, created in Open Office, it opens as jibberish on the other end. I sent it to a friend with a Mac, and she could open it. What do I need to do so that potential employers can open my resume, if I don't know what system they are using? Thank you
Send it as a PDF. Anyone can open it then, on any machine. There is a PDF button right next to the print icon on the toolbar.

If they want to open it and edit it, then you need toknow what they are going to open it with. If it is OOo then you don't need to do anything. If is is Word then you need to have saved it in Word format, so that Word can understand it.

File > Save As and select 'Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP' from the 'Save as type' dropdown menu. Make sure the 'Automatic file name extension' option is checked.

It is always safer to work in the native OOo formats (.odt and .ods etc) and then use Save As to save a copy in .doc or .xls format if you need to distribute it in MS Office formats. But always then go back to the native OOo version to continue working. If the people you are sending to do not need to edit the files then it is best to send them a PDF as then no matter what office suite they use it will be possible for them to read and print the files.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2010 10:55 pm
by RoryOF
And if they can't or won't open a PDF file then you probably shouldn't work for them.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2010 11:00 pm
by cindy5522
Thank you VERY MUCH. You dumbed it down to my level!
rory0F should be blocked from this site. His snide comments are not helpful to those of us actually trying to learn how this works.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2010 11:15 pm
by TheGurkha
cindy5522 wrote:Thank you very much. You dumbed it down to my level!
Maybe we just run on the same level ;)

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2010 11:17 pm
by RoryOF
It is a reasonable comment. If a company are so set in their ways that they _demand_ an editable resume (why? Think of possible identity theft) I doubt that any law abiding citizen should consider working for them, and should bombard the CEO with emails, and go over his head to the Board and the State Information Commission until their policy is reversed.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2010 10:11 am
by keme
cindy5522 wrote:rory0F should be blocked from this site.
Then we'd be blocking one of the most productive contributors to this forum. ("Productive" as in "producing solutions", that is.)
cindy5522 wrote:His snide comments are not helpful to those of us actually trying to learn how this works.
Yes they are. You just need to get the gist of his messages, which he elaborated to some degree in his last post.

Note that every critical statement he made in this thread is conditional, and as I read it, the conditionals are sincere and not merely rhetoric. In my eyes, RoryOF easily avoids "snide".

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 5:12 am
by andyhksk
No, it isn't.

I can't open large excel files. They are not terrible complex, just large, without any macros. But calc hangs.

Autosort doesn't work like it does in excel. Actually, I don't think it works at all, I get all kind of results but not the one I want. And when I close the file with autosort enabled I can't undo the autosort after reopening the file.
The data is just disappeared somewhere.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 10:33 am
by TheGurkha
OOo isn't intended to be 100% compatible. It isn't trying to be an MS Office clone. The point of OOo is to provide a free office suite that promotes the ODF file standards.

But it does also have better (but not perfect) inter-working with MS Ofice than anything else I've seen.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 10:48 am
by Villeroy
andyhksk wrote:No, it isn't.

I can't open large excel files. They are not terrible complex, just large, without any macros. But calc hangs.

Autosort doesn't work like it does in excel. Actually, I don't think it works at all, I get all kind of results but not the one I want. And when I close the file with autosort enabled I can't undo the autosort after reopening the file.
The data is just disappeared somewhere.
What is autosort? Of course you can not undo the sorting of a table after reloading. No spreadsheet can do that. The data are stored in whatever order you keep them.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 11:55 am
by floris v
In fact, all office software clears undo buffers when files are saved. You can only go back to an earlier version if you have Versions - Always save a version on closing turned on (and save versions often). If you save a file, you're supposed to be fine with it as it is. If you made a mistake, that's entirely your responsibility.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 11:48 am
by Hagar Delest
floris v wrote:In fact, all office software clears undo buffers when files are saved.
Oh, no, that's the most obvious advantage of Calc vs. MS Excel (for my use). OOo doesn't clear the undo buffer at save. And it's especially comfortable with spreadsheets when you sometimes notice unwanted effects after having saved!

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 2:26 pm
by floris v
Just noticed that today. :oops:

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 5:48 am
by Jzyehoshua
The trouble is that when you need to open a file in MS Office 2010 you need that sure compatibility and OpenOffice from what I've seen just does not have it. I know OpenOffice members takes pride in "not being a clone of MS Office" but it's that lack of compatibility that also reduces OpenOffice's value for people looking to open files they worked on in Microsoft Office (e.g. the Office trials). So right now I'll be buying an office suite, but I have no reason to believe the purchasable version of OpenOffice is more compatible than the free version, and have to go with MS Office. I have to open a complex file that OpenOffice unfortunately just can't handle.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:13 am
by kingfisher
The plain truth is that MSFT is closed source and the majority of people are locked in to its software. You cannot convert your files overnight but you can convert them. If you choose to be locked in, that's entirely your choice.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:47 am
by floris v
Of course: get both.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 5:26 am
by crusader
Jzyehoshua wrote:The trouble is that when you need to open a file in MS Office 2010 you need that sure compatibility
Sure compatibility with M$ Office 2010 can only be provided by M$ Office 2010.
Jzyehoshua wrote:I know OpenOffice members takes pride in "not being a clone of MS Office" but it's that lack of compatibility that also reduces OpenOffice's value
OpenOffice's value is more in its Open Document Format (ODF) than compatibility: I cherish the fact that I can access my information without having to KI$$ up to a monopoly that holds peoples' information hostage. Compatibility is necessitated by M$ slaves.
Jzyehoshua wrote:have to go with MS Office
Enslaving your information is your prerogative: enjoy...

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 5:13 am
by crusader
xloiutyhrfj wrote:What do I need to do so that potential employers can open my resume, if I don't know what system they are using?
One option is to send your resume in PDF format. Almost anyone can open that file. Both LibreOffice and OpenOffice allow you to export documents in PDF format.

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 6:01 pm
by PGAGA
Saturday, April 07, 2012
crusader wrote:Sure compatibility with M$ Office 2010 can only be provided by M$ Office 2010.
And only if installed on the same system. One is not guaranteed compatibility between different installations.

Phil

Re: Is OpenOffice.org 100% compatible with MS Office?

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 6:09 pm
by PGAGA
Saturday, April 07, 2012
crusader wrote:One option is to send your resume in PDF format.
PDF should be the only option for submission of résumés. To require an editable version of a résumé would be an ethical breach. Why would a potential employer want to be able to edit your résumé?

An employer request for anything other than PDF indicates one of two things: [1] there is a technical competency gap at the employer end that one may want to avoid or [2] they are testing your capabilities in a less than honest manner.

Phil