Do OpenOffice Users Save In Microsoft Format?

superglaze writes "Looking through an article on the smartphone office suite Quickoffice, I noted a claim by a company executive that OpenOffice users usually save their documents in a Microsoft format, e.g. .doc. Hence the company has no plans to support .odf. I guess I can see the rationale for this — it helps if you're sending a document to an MS-using company — but what's this community's general experience of saving in .odf vs. .doc format?"

Count at least ONE who doesnt.

Been saving in ODT, PDF and TXT for ages... add HTML to that.

Re:Count Two

pretty sure you're full of it, man. IF you already had office paid for, why would you want openoffice? I think openoffice is excellent, but when I gave up on Office 2007, I installed Office 2003.

If some moron told me to install an entire office program (A sluggish one that cloned the one I already have, at that), I would email his boss and ask for the correct file format. It's common sense. IF you abuse your position to have people install redundant software, you probably won't be in that position for very long. It's like sending your files in Spanish. .doc is the format of business.

Microsoft has a stranglehold, but it's on a dinosaur. Software like this should not be locally installed, it should be online so you can easily collaborate. Beating Microsoft by copying them is silly because they will always be a step ahead.

Re:Count Two

And don't you guys use GIS (if you're civil) or CAD? What are you communicating by .pdf? General work details, personnel stuff, etc?

Nope. Generally all CAD drawings get converted to PDF for the masses. Adobe reader (or Foxit or whatever) starts way quicker than most CAD programs, and it doesn't have the massive cost associated with everyone in the office having AutoCAD installed. Generally only a couple of people in the office actually do CAD, the rest of us just mark up drawings in red pen... Honestly, I've got way better things to do than piss around with CAD software all day anyway. Thats what CADdies are for.

Note that at our business the same goes for mechanical CAD drawings, schematics, specs (generated in word or excel), or any other drawings (visio etc). They all get stored on the server as PDF + the original file, so it can be edited, and it can also be viewed by everyone.

Re:Count Two

Good thing I'm a physicist, the format for journals is LaTeX.

Re:Count Two

Good thing I'm a proctologist, the format for tests is a brown probe.

Re:Count Two

Good thing Im unemployed and don't have to deal with silly things like "communicating with humans"

Re:Count Two

I've done some IT over the years along with other things.

I don't see how having paid for something that has drawbacks can actually cost me a damn thing. I took all the Office disks that my old man bought during my stay "away from the company" back to Staples Office Store, raised hell with the local management that I did NOT accept the licenses, and got back a good bit of cash. Do I run office? Why would I? The entire office runs Gentoo, BSD (various flavors) and one rig of Windows XP on a tripple boot arch.

Why would I pay for office again??

For the record, I've been messing with Open Office AND KOffice.

Both are nice, and neither in windows, nor linux are either worse than MSOffice.

As I do little business that can't be communicated in plaintext, PDF or webformat, I find that distributing my app to the net would result in forcing my clients to be logged in while in the field. Frankly I'd rather have them out there with a notepad, later transcribing data, than spending all their time connected.

Frankly, my best notes were actually done on napkins with a few friends at a late night coffee shop chat. I've scanned and printed a few to post script over the years. (Ghost script, if you would.)

Quite fun to mess with, and quite useful. Helps to NOT pay 5k for something that the IT shop doesn't even get a good markup from.

Re:Count Two

Why would I pay for office again??

I'm not a huge fan of Office, but:

• Excel's VBA scripting environment is easier to use than OO.org's StarScript or whatever they call it. Excel's VBA editor is very helpful and nice.... small projects only, though!
• OO.org's graphing functions are even worse than Excel's, which are terrible. Graphing is one of the main things that I have historically hated about OO.org.
• Complicated Excel documents almost never import 100%.
• Complicated Word documents almost never import 100%.
• Forget any document where OLE was used.

But yeah, for simple documents I find OO.org to be just fine. It helps a lot if you don't have to read in documents from outside the company.

For most of us, we need to have MS Office installed... and at that point, why use OO.org at all?

Missing the point

One at a time:

(A sluggish one
What's sluggish? I read this claim over and over again. In my experience, the only thing vaguely resembling sluggish is the nominally slower load. Please, provide more details.

that cloned the one I already have, at that)
That you paid a ridiculous amount of money for or stole. Most small businesses I deal with are very pragmatic and operate legitimately. Therefore they thank me when they can spend less.

I would email his boss and ask for the correct file format.
There's lots of small businesses who started their own successful businesses because they cut out that kind of political inaction. Or, maybe you should consider for a moment that I'm the boss.

It's common sense.
Maybe to you. But many small businesses LOVE the fact that I show them how to do the same job they used to do for less money.

you probably won't be in that position for very long.
Nope. Sorry. Turning away business because I maximize my customer's time/money.

It's like sending your files in Spanish.
Don't get me started on the bugs in a .doc written in one default language, then opened in a different default language. ODF? Not so much. .doc is the format of business. Microsoft has a stranglehold, but it's on a dinosaur.
Wwwait... What just happened there? On the one hand you tell me use .doc, but then establish it is on it's way to extinction. ODF isn't on its way to extinction. I'll use that.

it should be online so you can easily collaborate
So, a closed format that's more expensive to use and prevents collaboration is better because it's somehow on the web? ODF is cheaper and easier to communicate with.

Re:Count Two

You should advocate installing Sun's ODF Plugin [sun.com] for MS Office. It works quite well, as is free (as in beer).

Re:Count Two

This is useless to me...it doesn't work in Office:Mac v.X or Office:Mac 2004.

Call me when you consider the Mac users out there, Sun.

Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt.

I save ODF locally, PDF if someone else needs to print it, RTF if I need to send it to someone to edit, DOC if I need hell to freeze over.

(OT: Has everyone seen the new Open Rights Group T-shirts?)

Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt.

That's frickin' rude, man. Seriously, if I was doing business with you, especially where I was paying you, and you sent me some link to a new office suite because you sent me documents I couldn't read, I would cease to do business with your company.

Businesses tend to be more pragmatic than that. If someone sends us a .doc file that I can't open, we'll go find OpenOffice or the free Word viewer or something rather than ceasing to do business with them. If it's a regular business partner, we'll try to get them to send text as text rather than a huge .doc with no formatting and 1-2 paragraphs of text in it (which seems to be what almost all .doc files I receive are), and csv rather than xls. If it's a one-off, it's easier just to scrounge for a workaround.

OTOH, it's never worth the risk of sending an odd format when something standard will do. I don't think I've needed to send anything other than text, HTML, jpg/gif, or csv for years. If I did, I'd go with whatever seemed easiest on all sides (probably PDF).

On the main topic, I'd guess that most openoffice users do save in Microsoft format. The only reason I ever see anyone install it is to read and respond to those crappy .doc attachments people sling around, and I'd guess that's the most common reason for having it.

Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt.

I'm pretty close to the same. I only use ODF stuff locally, but if someone else needs it that I know is using MSO, i save the document as a .doc. I don't see the .doc format as somehow evil, i just like ODF much better for obvious reasons. At the end of the day, .doc still gets the job done.

Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt.

"DOC if I need hell to freeze over."

So what you are saying is, saving files in .DOC format helps fight global warming?

A new advertising angle for Microsoft's marketroids.

Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt.

I use .odf when I'm feeling vindictive. Sometimes, a company will send me an email, whose entire body is otherwise stored in a .doc file, when it could have otherwise fit in just the regular body. I re-save the document as an .odf, make my changes or answer their questions, and then send it back to them.

S.

Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt.

From personal experience, most people pay so little attention to email you send them that it wouldn't matter too much if you were able to send an email that magically turned their computer into a dancing ferret wearing top hat and tails, they wouldn't open it anyway.

Not unless the subject line was britney_spears_naked, anyway.

Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt.

I actually got an advantage once because I didn't have Word. A company sent me a contract for moving in .doc format. I did my best with WordPad which was the closest thing I had available, but it ended up mangled. I sent it filled-out to the best of my ability, with a comment that I couldn't easily deal with it and I wasn't sure if it was usable.

Well, they ended up delaying my moving significantly and then asking me for some extra fees that I'd never known about. I objected, and they said this information was all in the doc file I'd signed.

"Oh, the one I could barely read? It wasn't shown in the version I saw, because I couldn't read much. I sent you what WordPad did with it - what I signed was that."

Turned out that a lot of the major clauses were missing in that version due to WordPad's crummy handling - but since I'd signed it, and they'd accepted it (I presume without looking at it, otherwise they would have seen how mangled it was), they had technically agreed to the modified version which didn't have any of those fees at all.

I was tired of dealing with them by then anyway, so I told them to either deliver my stuff at the price that I'd agreed to or send it back to the place they'd picked it up from and refund my money, as I'd certainly never agreed to give them more than they had already received. They delivered it in two days.

Users are lazy

My users at least are lazy. They'll just save it in whatever format the software defaults to. They don't know or care about different document formats, they just know they "do this to open a document", "do that to save it", etc. Windows explorer defaults to hiding document extensions, so why should they even bother learning? Default it to save to MS office format and you'll save headaches since it will "just work" when they email it to someone.

Don't give in!

Interchangeability is important. The .doc and other formats replaced WordPerfect and .rtf standards as de facto interchange formats.

I save in .odf, and when I need to distribute documents, I export the docs to PDF. They're clean and easy to read, and the export is very accurate. PDF is also basically universally supported.

The MS formats are so particular that the given version of office that people are using will maul my document. OO exports to PDF well, I dont need to check on it.

Re:Don't give in!

PDF is basically universally supported... for reading.

If you need to exchange documents with someone that needs to edit them, PDF is not an option.

Re:Don't give in!

If you need to exchange documents with someone that needs to edit them, PDF is not an option.

How common is this, really? I don't recall any occasion when I've expected somebody from outside my company to edit a document that I started. And inside the company, we've standardized on OO.o, so it doesn't matter which format we use. Which means we use .odt, because (a) the files are smaller and (b) it's easier to automatically process them.

Re:Don't give in!

I'm so glad that you told me that - it always drove me nuts. I think a TIFF pasted into word will be my next resume format for the recruiters!

Save in ODF

Honestly I always save in ODF on my MAC and then just convert to whatever I need to when I need to send a file to someone else. I get people asking for PDF or Word so it's easiest if I save as ODF and convert from there rather than saving as WORD and losing some of my formatting to convert to something else.

Re:I save in ODF

Translation:

I'm a dick that likes to slow down the business process and make others install redundant software (if they are even allowed to) that both costs time and money, but I don't care because it makes me feel important.

ODF for me, DOC for thee

I save my items internally in ODF format, but if I have to send something to another person without OO.o, I need to save it in .doc format. Honestly, if someone could convince the world that ODF is an acceptable format, I'd love to save the step.

Re:ODF for me, DOC for thee

I have my "editable" one in the native format, and just do a "save as" for .doc if I'm sending it to someone. Then unfortunately I need to go re-open my actual .odf file, which is a pain.

Honestly, what I'd like (and might be available, I haven't looked) is the option to automatically save in multiple formats whenever you push the save key. If it automatically "worked" in .odf, but was always exporting along the way to both .doc and .pdf, that'd be ideal for me.

Re:Neither....PDF!

I also do PDF quite bit, it also makes you look a bit more professional, as PDFs have a nice snobby image.

However, my main format, especially when collaborating is .txt. The best supported open format in the history of computing. Plain Text forever!

And they are the reason

It is software companies like this that force us to save in MS formats!

.DOC

I have and use OpenOffice, but frequently wind up writing stuff that I'm going to want to send to a friend or allow him to grab off my share or whatnot. Rather than dick around with the whole format thing, its easier to just use .doc. Saves time and hassle.

ODF-only here

Finished documents are sent in PDF format. Internal documents are strictly ODF.

I only send a .doc when I absolutely need some MS vict^H^H^H^Huser to contribute to the document.

And, even then, only when I can't make him/her install OpenOffice.

in a word, yes

Eveything I need to send document files to uses Word or PDF. Most places I send pr's or ad copy to use the old standby formats. No ODF at the local newspaper yet.

I always save documents in openoffice format.

If I am sending the document to someone who has explicitly requested the document be the document in Office format, only then will I save in that format (and even then, I still have it saved in openoffice format also, since that will always be my working copy). For all other cases where I am sending, I export to PDF.

We used to.

Internally we used to default all OO.o installs to save as MSFT formats. we changed that recently.

We changed all internal to OO.o formats and all documents that exit the company must be sent as pdf. we did this for 3 reasons. compatability, security, and simplicity.

compatable. even a solaris machine can display a pdf. simplicity. PDF is actually the most universal document format no matter what Microsoft says.

Security. We had a problem with a salesperson that sent a contract to a client. the client sent it back and accepted it. The salesperson used the file sent back by the customer as the legal document and did not check it for changes. we got SCREWED because the asshole client changed several things silently in their favor.

If we sent them a PDF, they cant play that game as all contracts have to be sent to legal for acceptance as the oridional document format. this solved this problem.

Re:We used to.

err... it's still possible to alter a PDF document.

You'd need to put in place a proceedure that checks and confirms the MD5Sum or imposes digital signatures.
Munge.

Only for sharing documents

I work at a tech desk at a university library and see a significant number of people who use open office, mainly Mac users. All of the people who have come to the desk with open office issues save in .odf. Their problem is that they want to print at the library, which requires the use of one of our information commons computers and therefore Word. So I have to show them how to save their documents as .doc files in order to load them in Word. None of them knew how to save as a .doc file and only one of them was even aware that open office saved as .odf.

Re:Only for sharing documents

It seems to me that your library should install open office on those computers, as well. It goes against the spirit of anti-trust legislation to have public utilities (such as a university library) forcing people into a specific company's product in order to get full print capability. That is typically going to be the case, as well, because since .doc is a closed format, not everything transfers over correctly.

Now, on the other side of the coin may be the fact that Microsoft has provided the library with computers for free, under the contract that no openoffice gets installed on them. Fine, and well -- then set up one computer which the library has purchased free and clear, that sends the .odfs to the print server.

If the contract specifies no open-office anywhere, at all, then I'd say that the users should be informed of that fact, and be given the opportunity to sign up on a list of complainants, for the purpose of a university-wide lawsuit against Microsoft.

Going to ODT

My documents are going towards ODT.
When I save to ODT, the documents are stable.
When I save to .DOC the indices and contents get messed up. Custom masks get messed up.

However, I do use OOo to fix corrupted word documents. I open them, save them as ODT, then resave them as word and then word does not crash on them any more.

We need a really easy-to-use tool...

I save all of my files in ODF/ODT, and if I need to submit them to just about anyone else I have to convert them to an MS-Office (.doc, .xls, etc...) format. I do the same with audio files, image files, etc, using open file formats instead of their closed/proprietary/patent-encumbered brethren.

The problem is that people's computers aren't coming pre-installed with software that can read our "primary" Open File Formats. Heck -- even when I send my Macintosh-toting friends Ogg Vorbis files, they don't have any idea how to open them, so eventually I get enough complaints and just re-encode in mp3 format (and feel bad about trying and failing at spreading the Good Word).

Perhaps the best thing that us geeks could do to support open file formats is to develop a little "Unknown File Format" system utility for all of the current flavors of Windows and OSX. The utility would sit in the background and would pop up a little note whenever the user tried to open a file of an unrecognized type, telling the user that the file was, say, an XCF image file created by The GIMP, and offering to download an appropriate program to either view or edit the file.

If we had such a tool, we could feel much better about sending out open file formats like Ogg Vorbis, knowing that even clueless users would only be a click away from opening our files.

Need viewer application + plugin

What we need is a small portable efficient ODF viewer that can be used as a stand-alone app, as well as a browser plugin, just to render and view + print ODF files. That way people won't have to have large applications just to print these files.

Also, it seems to me though that (when sharing) OpenOffice users might not save in .odf or .doc format as much as they would PDF format, actually.

Only when forced to.

Normally I hand it to Win Users in PDF but frequently I am force to save in doc format to overcome win users shortcomings.