OpenOffice Impress - useable on Vista??

garnettgirl

I've just had a frantic email from a friend who has a very important presentation to give on Monday for her course.

Her old (dead) PC had Powerpoint/XP on it, but her new Vista Laptop doesn't have Powerpoint and she now has no way of putting her presentation together - it's at the 'scribbled on paper' stage.

I've suggested downloading Impress on OpenOffice - is this a viable idea??? She will be presenting on a machine with Vista on it on Monday.

Her only other option (literally) is to do it on OHP slides and I know she doesn't want to do that as everyone else has presented on Smartboard screens.

fitshase

She could try downloading a trial copy of Office for the time being:-

http://trial.trymicrosoftoffice.com/trialukireland/default.aspx


It will be a fully functional office suite for approximately 60 days. Make sure your friend activates the trial software when installed to enable full functionality.

footyfan

Hi
I'm surprised you haven't had an answer by now!
Anyway, OpenOffice Impress does work on Vista (not that I've used it).

NickMidgley

If she had it on her old PC, why not just install it onto the new one?

Bob63

OpenOffice works perfectly on Vista.

A credible backup plan for simple presentations is to use Google Docs - http://docs.google.com - which can be used to build presentations online then save as powerpoint or PDF files.

bookduck

I'm surprised your friend has not worked it out for herself, used her office cd and installed it on the laptop.

Think she's hinting and actually wants to borrow your laptop, or borrow something?

coolagarry

There will be no problem downloading impress and doing her presentation on that - Vista will not be a problem. Incidentally an advantage of doing the presentation on impress is that she can save it as a PDF file which makes it easy to print off or email. Make sure they download the latest version.

toasterman

Just one question.
She's going to be creating the presentation at home on her own laptop, right?

The one she's going to use to actually DO the presentation - is that the same laptop, or someone elses?

Impress and Powerpoint use different file formats natively.
Impress can open-from, and save-to Powerpoint format but (afaik) Powerpoint can't open Impress files.

So if she's going to do it on Impress, but the laptop she uses for presentation has Powerpoint, make sure she goes save-as, and saves it in Powerpoint format

garnettgirl

cheers all - I had the same thought as toasterman in the night (as you do) so it won't be a goer - she'll be trying to open an Impress file on a PC without OpenOffice installed. I've sent her a link to Preezo as a back up idea as there is internet access from the room we'll be in.

Nickmidgley - her PC is completely dead so she can't use that version
bookduck - no, she wasn't hinting in the least, she was just asking for ideas from me as a friend who is doing the same course as IT isn't her thing at all. She had suddenly encountered one of those stomach churning situations and started to panic. Not everyone is PC savvy you know

I'll send her the trial version of Office - that will probably be incredibly helpful as she is majorly panicking now and only has tonight after work and then tomorrow to get it together for the assessment on Monday.

Cheers all.

sidthesexist

Got open office on my rig (running vista ultimate 64 bit) and it works fine

superscaper

toasterman wrote: »

Impress and Powerpoint use different file formats natively.
Impress can open-from, and save-to Powerpoint format but (afaik) Powerpoint can't open Impress files.

Just now opened an Impress file in Powerpoint 2007. All you need is the free .odt add on from Microsoft to open, edit and save Open Office files in Office 2007.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter