Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I have documents, files, emails etc., loaded onto a clickfree external backup drive, created using Microsoft Office 2000 and retrieved just before my pc died. Some of these are very valuable to me and I am unsure whether I can download them to open office. I no longer have an Office 2000 disc. Should I bite the bullet and buy another?

You office documents and files should open fine with OOo, however some formatting may be different.. The emails will not. You would need an email client like Thunderbird and even then you may not be able to open the emails.

OpenOffice can open documents created with MS Office, but the compatibility is not perfect.

If your primary goal is merely access to the document content, then OOo should be fine--it can almost always open and display MS Office documents. The formatting may not be perfect, but you can still see what's there.

If you need to use the documents (edit, print, etc.), then things get a bit more complicated. For simple documents, you're likely to find that OOo makes an adequate substitute for MS Office. For more complex documents (lots of graphics, figures, bibliographies, indexes, etc.) you're likely to find that OOo isn't up to the job and you really need MS Office.

Note: the problem here is compatibility with the MS document files. If you're creating new documents from scratch, then OOo is very close to MS Office in terms of features.

You can always invest some time and try OOo to see how well it works for you. When you work with a document in OOo, start out by saving a new copy under a different name so you always have your original (MS Office-only) copy to fall back on.

Edit: PS:

Oops--Tom K types faster than I do!

Thanks to you both for your answers. I am going to download the files and see what happens. I have tried a sample word doc which looked fine in OOo. I can keep the docs on clickfree so if the worst happens I still have them - but I have faith in OOo!

Just to let everyone know. I have downloaded about half the docs and, with the exception of a bit of formatting, everything looks fine - in fact, some of the docs look better! Thanks again.