Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Are OpenOffice and LibreOffice two different products? How do they differ?

I'm brand new here. I don't have either. I am looking for a tool that can create fillable PDF forms from a MS Word or Excel file.

Thanks,

-j

Welcome to the Forums
OpenOffice and LibreOffice are two different products.
There are many differences between the two, but there are more similarities than differences.
I do not claim to know all of the differences, but even the ones I know of would take up more time to write than to try to answer question(s) regarding specific aspects of each.
LibreOffice has a higher compatibility with M$Office formats than OpenOffice does and LibreOffice also has a higher level of active development.
LibreOffice is a fork from the original OpenOffice, so they share a lot of the same code.

As to a Fillable PDF form, I'd recommend using a proper PDF program, like Adobe Creator.
I've never tried to make a PDF using either LibreOffice or OpenOffice, thus I cannot state if either one is even capable of creating a fillable PDF form.
Another user may be able to provide that information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice
Long story short: https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/li ... penoffice/

LibreOffice was forked from OpenOffice 3.3 because OpenOffice was about to become homeless. OpenOffice 3.3 and LibreOffice 3.3 were identical products except from the blue/green branding. OpenOffice found a new home under the roof of the Apache foundation. SInce 2015 it has become clear that OpenOffice is dying under that roof because all relevant developers and other volunteers switched over to the more attractive project. OpenOffice releases tiny little updates once a year and recently it had to fix updates because they were broken because there are not even enough voluteers to test the entire product on each supported platform.

Contrary to that, LibreOffice can get on someones nerves because its quality management is not good enough for the pace of development and quite obviously, there is a group of people who constantly mess up the menues with never ending "good ideas".

Jennifer Murphy wrote:Are OpenOffice and LibreOffice two different products? How do they differ?
I'm brand new here. I don't have either. I am looking for a tool that can create fillable PDF forms from a MS Word or Excel file.

If you need compatibility to MS sellware or rentware, and in specific if you also need to work with .OOXML formatted files, you should be better off with LibreOffice. LibO can even write such files. (NOT recommended, however!)

Concerning fillabel forms:
1. LibO can create them. I never tied With OOo, AOO.
2. The next step will be done by any brand of pdf software ( a "Reader"). You or your clients need to use one supporting the filling.
(I don't know if all of them do. LibO can't be used for the purpose.)
3. Forms are basically made to connect to a database. If you want to do so, you will need to know a lot more than you have asked for.

The attached example was made "on the fly" with LibO, and the fields were filled after the export to pdf using "Foxit Reader". You can open it with your reader, and most likely change the fields. No connection to a DB contained.

Your question mainly is about export to pdf. You should consider to add something like "(concerning export to pdf-forms)"
The other aspects were already covered by answers above.

LibreOffice is really good maintained, with also a lot of enhancements is the compatibility with Microsoft documents (docx, etc). For creating fillable PDF that should not matter and you could use the OpenDocument format (odt, etc) as well, whatever you prefer. There are also a lot of new features in the area of creating, editing and exporting PDF’s in LibreOffice.

A good start for creating fillable PDF’s would be https://www.linuxuprising.com/2019/02/h ... h.html?m=1, doesn’t matter if you use like Windows, MacOS or Linux as the workflow is much the same. Maybe some of the 3th party tooling to view/edit/test may be different as you prefer or available on your platform of choise.

A widely unknown feature is the ability to submit forms to http servers.
Create the form.
Add a button with action=submit
Specify the URL where to submit the form.
Test with an ad-hoc html server on localhost: The ad-hoc server does not support OPTIONS and the page can not be found because there is none. However, the URL with parameters arrives.
TextBox=foo
CheckBox= means that the box was checked. If it is unchecked, the CheckBox parameter is missing.

I was able to get what I wanted with Google Sheets. Thanks for the suggestions.

Once having taken the bait, you probably won't get off the hook.
Some having built services on google maps (being free as a bait) didn't when it was no longer free for them. (One relevant case I was afflicted by.)