Honest reviews and opinions on open office?

Question

I ran out of my trial for Microsoft office and being a college student, I'd prefer not to have to buy it. I've heard about open office from my old history teacher and I've seen a lot of reviews about it online. The fact that its free and legal makes me feel there has to be something up with it.. These are my main questions.

Has anyone gotten a virus from it? Can it harm my computer at all?
Does it work as well with windows as it does apple or linux?
Microsoft vs. open office?
Can I view old saved documents from word with it?
Anything else that's not mentioned on the website?

Answer 1

Open Office has been discontinued. There is Apache Open Office, and I think Star Open Office. I avoid all of them and now I use Libre Office.



Whether Libre Office is better than Open Office is arguable. I've used both for years. Microsoft Office does NOTHING that I need that can't be done with Open/Libre Office. Spreadsheet, word processing, powerpoint presentations - no problem.



There is no catch. It is an excellent replacement for Microsoft Office. It is free, and it is not bloated like MS Office is. It will open Microsoft Office documents, and create PDFs, .DOCX and many other formats. It will open old formats that MS Office won't touch. It is more compatible with different formats of documents the MS Office is. It works fine on both Linux and Windows.



Give it a shot. You will never look back at MS Office, and you won't miss it.

Answer 2

If they downloaded OpenOffice directly from the OpenOffice website (first link below) they won't have gotten a virus from it. (It's actually now called Apache OpenOffice.)



It can't harm your computer as it doesn't have viruses, trojans, adware, malware, spyware, etc. attached to it.



I can't comment on how well it works in comparison to on Apple OS or Linux as I've only used it on Windows.



OpenOffice is as good as Microsoft Office when you consider what it costs ... nothing. You can Open, Edit, and Save Microsoft Office files.



You CAN Open, Edit, and Save previously saved Microsoft Word documents.



The only thing that I can think of that the OpenOffice website doesn't mention is that there's an even better Office Suite called LibreOffice, which is also FREE and can do exactly the same as OpenOffice. (I've been using LibreOffice for at least 4 or 5 years now, since OpenOffice wasn't being updated as regularly as it once was. It's changed now, though. OpenOffice is now regularly updated again.)



Another FREE Office Suite of programs that you might like to take a look at is Kingsoft Office Suite Free.

Answer 3

Following previous answers, yes, go for LibreOffice.



"The fact that its free and legal makes me feel there has to be something up with it.. "



Not necessarily. Linux is free, and over 70% of the world's computing devices run on it, including nearly every one of the top 500 supercomputers. The New York and London Stock exchanges, The US Department of Defence (including the nuclear subs) and US Federal Aviation, the space station, CERN project, the City of Munich and the entire French Parliament and the Gendarmeriet. That's just a few as I could have included Brazil with over 50,000 schools with 35 MILLION school kids all running Linux,



Oh, also Facebook, Google, Yahoo, IBM, Amazon, Twitter, Tumbler, SoundCloud, etc, etc.



Convinced?!



As far as LibreOffice vs Microsoft Office is concerned, MO contains some specialised functions, particularly data and merge functions, which are used by less than 0.1% of users. LO has 98% of the capability of MO - and none of the bloat or lock-in.



Plus it's free - so it costs you *nothing* to try it.

Answer 4

Hi There,

I have and use MS Office 97 Pro. It works well. Excel is a great program.

Power Point works but to me it is "unhandy" to add new 'slides' ( pages ).



Also have tried Open Office, Apache Open Office and Libre Office.

My choice of these three would be Libre Office ( although I cannot tell much difference ).



The spreadsheet programs work fine except when you make a graph it is embedded in the original worksheet.



Excel lets you save a graph in a separate tab so you can print it out without cutting out and pasting to a photo editor or word processor program.



The presentation programs in Libre Office, and Apache Open Office are much easier for me to use than Power Point.



The free open source programs have more features than Office and of course they are free and can open, edit and save MS Office files. If you download from the source the files are "clean" ...no viruses, malware or advertisements.



The other thing I do not like about MS Office is that they are trying to integrate the programs "in the cloud" and charge annually for the license to use them. That might be great for their business model but not for my model.



My vote would be for Libre Office.



Hope this helps,

Al

Answer 5

First thing to do is to head to your college's library and ask the librarian whether your college offers Microsoft Office for free or a token charge. Most colleges make this offer to their students.



If your college doesn't participate in that program, there's a different program from Microsoft that gives Microsoft Office to college students for a nominal fee

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/office-university



Now on to your questions:

LibreOffice is the most up to date fork of OpenOffice. Use LibreOffice for the best compatibility with Microsoft Office. Just the same, there are literally hundreds of features in Microsoft Office that LibreOffice doesn't have yet.



LibreOffice is the same on Mac, PC and LINUX.



The history of OpenOffice/LibreOffice explains the "something up" uneasyness you feel. Before OpenOffice was free open source software it was a commercial product sold by Sun Microsystems. The product bombed out in the market place, and Sun continued to pour mega $$ into development, but to no avail. To spite Microsoft Sun decided to give it away for free. After sinking $$ into OpenOffice Sun went belly-up. Oracle Corporation bought Sun's OpenOffice assets and immediately decided to jettison OpenOffice. A splinter group of the OpenOffice team made LibreOffice from OpenOffice and is trying to keep it alive. Without a sugar daddy, this will be difficult to sustain, but they are valiant and the effort continues.



In theory, it is possible to get a macro virus from LibreOffice. As a practical matter, the macro tools in LibreOffice are pretty bad, so getting a macro virus to actually run would be an accomplishment all in its own. So while it's theoretically possible, it's extremely unlikely you would get a virus from LibreOffice.



What you do have to beware of is the install process for LibreOffice and OpenOffice. You'll easily blow by the little box checked by default that will install something you don't want or need like Google Chrome, a web browser toolbar, or other goodie that LibreOffice gets money for pushing. Look for a check box and uncheck it in the web page or installer so you don't get other junk along with your LibreOffice install. They get paid to stick you with unwanted, unasked for stuff.



Yes, there is some harm that can come to your computer. If you already have Microsoft Office installed, LibreOffice and OpenOffice will change all your file associations to their software even if you don't ask for it. In fact, every time you open LibreOffice or OpenOffice it might change your file associations even if you changed them yourself to Microsoft Office.



Yes, you can view old saved Word, PowerPoint and Excel files with LibreOffice. Where you might run into trouble is viewing current Word, PowerPoint and Excel files because the LibeOffice OpenOffice feature set hasn't change a whole lot since the days of Sun back in 1995-1997 timeframe.



If your major involves data analysis, you can skip OpenOffice/LibreOffice altogether. The new features in Excel are simply not in the free products.

Answer 6

Apache Openoffice Review

Answer 7

Excellent answer from micksmixxx.

The majority of office users use a word processor, a spreadsheet program & a presentation program, which makes Kingsoft Office ideal. I recently downloaded Kingsoft Office Suite Free 2013 & the setup file is less than 50MB. It now features both the classic interface, as well as the modern (ribbon) interface. The newer MS Office file formats (.docx & .xlsx) can be opened, edited & saved. Unfortunately, .pptx can only be opened & edited, not saved.

Answer 8

Apache Openoffice Reviews

Answer 9

I don't think there is such a thing as an honest politician. In order to make it through the American political climate all the way to the White House, you have to lie at some point...sad, but true. So that leaves only the politicians past records to go by. And I'm not talking about what the media conjures up; I'm talking about senate records, community service, tax records, etc. A politician that gives back to his community and country is someone to consider favorably. And as for McCain...it's going to be hard for any politician to beat his war record and the enormous sacrifice he made for his fellow troops as well as his country.

Answer 10

You can download LibreOffice for free here http://j.mp/1rmr10b



LibreOffice is an all-in-one professional office productivity and management package for your PC.