Transition from MS Office to StarOffice and collaboration on

[mfaynberg]

Hello everyone,
here is my situation. We are switching from MS Office to StarOffice 8 Like one can understand there are a lot of files already existing in MS format and complete conversion is not a one-day matter. What I would like to achieve now is to allow people to work in the more or less familiar way. What we had in MS Office was simple: any file could be simultaneously used by several users. The first user (who provided the password if a file is password-protected, or just the first user who opened an unprotected file) had the full access (read/write), while all other could open this file in the read-only mode.
So far I cannot offer anything similar using StarOffice (I realize I lack experience with it...). In the ideal situation I would like to:
1. Allow multiple users to open the same file, say spreadsheet (which may be in either .xls or .odt format) so that only one of them could make changes in it;
2. Allow the same functionality but based upon a password rather than upon who opened it first.
I will greatly appreciate any input.
Thank you in advance,
Mike

[huw]

Collaborative spreadsheet editing is coming, but only for ODS, not XLS.

Collaboration for Calc with Shared Spreadsheets

Issue 8811: Allow multiple users to edit the same spreadsheet through workbook sharing

Issue 54987: Collaborative editing

Search keywords: collaborating sharing

[mfaynberg]

Huw,
thank you! It would be really great to have that sort of option! On the other hand I was asking about much simpler thing: to allow multiple users to read a file while only to one of them to change its contents. Can I have that now? Oh, and regarding your wording: "coming" means - of course approximately - when?
Regards,
Mike

[huw]

Read only might be possible, although I seem to remember people trying this having permissions problems from their networks when mixing client operating systems. Access permissions set by the network, and how to force or train users to open files read only - they're the points I'd explore.

[AndrewZ]

On the other hand I was asking about much simpler thing: to allow multiple users to read a file while only to one of them to change its contents. Can I have that now?

It has worked for me in OpenOffice.org 2.x. What happens when you try? I had a Linux 2.4 Samba server with Windows SMB clients and Linux NFS clients. Most used OpenOffice.org and some used Microsoft Office. The file locking was mostly reliable.

Issue 8811: Allow multiple users to edit the same spreadsheet through workbook sharing

The collaboration on spreadsheets feature (#8811) is available in OpenOffice.org 3.0 (due September). It includes better file locking which may help you. , Please test it before its final release to find any bugs.