Works 8.5 or Open Office?

epz_2

agreed, file format is irrelivant since who really cares if you can save 3k off a word doc when the smallest hard drive you can buy these days is measured in hundreds of gigs.

i would always try and keep them in an open format, or at least popular like office 97 so you can share them easily.


why not jus try open office for a while and see if it meats your needs, its not like it costs anything to buy

toasterman

I wasn't talking about 3k actually. I shaved off 111mb from a powerpoint file, by compressing some photos in it to 200dpi. Odd, as they were already lower than 200dpi when I put them in.
The 118mb powerpoint file had got to the point where it refused to save changes to it because of the size, and the user was having issues opening it.

I just happened to notice, while trying to help them with this, that converting anything office2003 to openoffice's formats made it smaller.


I'd have to agree with you on the 'just try it'. It's not even like it'll take a long time to download - 100mb on broadband is nothing.

superscaper

toasterman wrote: »

I wasn't talking about 3k actually. I shaved off 111mb from a powerpoint file, by compressing some photos in it to 200dpi. Odd, as they were already lower than 200dpi when I put them in.
The 118mb powerpoint file had got to the point where it refused to save changes to it because of the size, and the user was having issues opening it.

I just happened to notice, while trying to help them with this, that converting anything office2003 to openoffice's formats made it smaller.


I'd have to agree with you on the 'just try it'. It's not even like it'll take a long time to download - 100mb on broadband is nothing.

Also with MS docs we're talking of a difference of reducing it to 25-30% of it's original size. For me it's not about the hard drive space but the difference between easily emailing a document and having to fileshare or find some other less convenient service.

toasterman

I hadn't even thought about email.
I still get users trying to email 20-30mb of attachments at once and wondering why it doesn't get through.

I've hijacked the thread with a discussion on filesizes though, so I'll leave it there. Apologies to the op.

Charlton_King

No luck with the Vista query yet then..?

superscaper

Charlton_King wrote: »

No luck with the Vista query yet then..?

Don't have Vista myself but it should be compatible, according to OO themselves. And you've got nothing to lose giving it a try.

Bob63

Another OO fan here. I currently run OO 2.4 (not yet released) on my Mac and it is even better than the NeoOffice version.

The nice thing IMHO about OO, apart from the most obvious bit about being free-of-charge, is that it works on so many platforms.

Mike

hb1444

toasterman wrote: »

Yeah I'm not sure about Office 2007 documents in Openoffice. I'm running NeoOffice on a Mac, and it doesn't support them, but then I haven't got the latest version.
I know I can save a text file on my Mac using the basic text editor, in Word 97 .doc, Word 2007 .docx format, or Openoffice's Opendocument format.

To be fair to Openoffice, you can't open Office 2007 documents in Office 2003, unless you've installed the Microsoft Compatibility pack thingy on the 2003 machine. Consequently, everyone I know with Office 2007 has had to default to saving in Office 2003 formats, or any other businesses they deal with can't open their files.
Give it a few years, and it'll all sort itself out.

Just out of interest, does Office 2007 open OpenOffice format files?

My gripe with MS Office filesizes has always been Powerpoint files more than anything else. Here's an example that was causing me trouble a while ago:
A 30-slide powerpoint presentation is 28mb. I edit text, save, 28mb. I add a 31st slide to it, and save, and it's now 12mb.
I take the 31st slide out, and save, and its 12.5mb. What sort of file gets bigger when you delete parts, and smaller when you add something in?

I opened it in OpenOffice and saved it in their format, and it was much much smaller.

Openoffice doesn't open ms office 2007 docs, i just tried it!:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

superscaper

hb1444 wrote: »

Openoffice doesn't open ms office 2007 docs, i just tried it!:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

Like I posted, I think there's a 3rd party plugin although I'd imagine it'd be a hassle.

dazg_2

Open office works on vista as I have it on my laptop, and I use a portable version on my pendrive.