OpenOffice and Microsoft Office

[gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 03/09/2010 09:17 AM, aldo albanese wrote:
> Hi,
> My company is 95% windows.  I was planning to install OpenOffice3.2 on new desktops.  I was wondering what kind of issues I will get myself into:  These are few of my questions:
> Compatibility issues between OpenOffice and Office 
> Learning curves for my users that are not to technical savvy.
> Business acceptance of this new product
> User Training, more helpdesk tickets?
> Please let me know if you have implemented something similar in your company and if you were successful with this implementation.
>    
With respect to the others who have answered.
In general, OpenOffice is highly compatible with Microsoft office, but 
there are some issues  that could crop up. The one issue in my area was 
the use of VBA scripts in Excel. You can't directly convert an Excel VBA 
script to OpenOffice. OpenOffice has all of the functionality and more. 
I found that there was some stuff I could not do properly in Excel but 
could in OpenOffice. So, you really need to look at what people are 
using it for.  Documents, normal spreadsheets, presentations, OpenOffice 
works well. There are some issues with dates such as the datediff() 
function. (I think that datediff is supported in OOo 3.2 now, but for 
the most part, macros should convert well.

The bottom line is that the user community would need to buy into the 
solution. What is the cost of providing Microsoft Office based on the 
number of seats, and what do people use it for.  A few years ago, 
someone presented how to move a company from Microsoft Office to Open 
Office at the BLU.

-- 
Jerry Feldman<gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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