Plugins for Microsoft Office for OpenOffice Documents?

DeBaas asks: "We are all in favour of getting Open Standards in place so that we can happily use Open/Star/K Office or whatever without the nagging problem: The Microsoft Office users cannot read our files correctly. Much of the focus is on providing filters to be able to make and read Microsoft Office files. However, should it not be the other way around, as well? Would it be feasible to make an open source project providing a plugin to MS office so that it can read and write in our preferred open format. Sort of a 'save as open document standard'. Is there a legal problem?, a technical problem? (is it already possible?) I would love it if I could send documents in OpenOffice knowing the other site can actually use and see it the way I meant to, even with MicroSoft Office."

Comments

Wrong way?

[Smidge204]

It seems to be that, since Microsoft clearly doesn't want open document formats, that they would WANT to make thier products compatable with everybody else's, but not the other way around.

For MS, the perfect office suite would be a package that could read everything and saved in a format nobody else could read. Seems that this is kind if thing would help that along...

Can there be any guarantee that, if we give MS the ability to read OpenOffice files, that OpenOffice will always be able to access MSWord files?
=Smidge=

A nice idea, but ..

[McCarrum]

I'd love to put openoffice on my machines in my somewhat large (and unnamed for the usual reasons) organisation. We've discussed it at the executive level, and the sole reason for staying with MSOffice is *other* organisations.

We rely on communicating with government, military and corporate entities, and their standard is Office. Period.

Whilst the import functions on openoffice are very good, they have to be (from a business critical aspect) absolutely 100% compatible -- and when you're dealing with multi-chapter doc files which use 90% of Word's capability, well, from my testings inhouse, I can't guarantee that level of accuracy. Images can move around, hide text, etc.

What I've done is start a different tactic within the organisation. All documents are PDF unless they require collaboration on the document. If collaboration is required, I'm now looking into a web-based solution (via our portal). Now, this does produce new challenges, but it does break the '.doc' monopoly.

Another damn important point is XML. With MSOffice moving towards their own XML, and with movement on producing an open standard for XML documents (slashdot article | actual link), this may be the approach that ends this problem. But it's going to be some time yet.

This is going to be a slow moving issue. I recommend we all relax, keep working on this, and slow and steady will win the race ... eventually.

Re:A nice idea, but ..

[WatertonMan]

Actually there was a story on Slashdot last week that Microsoft won't be adopting a nice XML data format for Word. I'm sure they'll use aspects of XML but the difficulty of reading Word files is actually a plus for Redmond. They don't WANT to make it easy to write Office compatible software. They don't WANT OpenOffice or other projects to succeed. So anyone who thinks Word files will one day be easy to write a parser for is simply deluding themselves.

The other problem with this is the idea that simply having a common document format between Word and some other word processor would mean anything. Anyone remember Word PerfecT? It could do this. Word even read and wrote WP files in all versions. However it was almost always a royal pain in the ass having half a company's files in one format or the other. I did IT for a few years out of college and that was a headache at times.

No, if you want Open Office to succeed it has to handle NATIVELY all the various document formats that Microsoft handles. Further it must use those as their default out of the box if you want to have more clueless users using that software. Otherwise you'll have users saving their OpenOffice files, sending them to someone and that other person not being able to open it. Just because they COULD download some plug-in means little. They'll get upset about how you sent them a non-standard file.

The more hassle there is, the less likely it is to be adopted. Half the reason Office is so popular is because, for all its flaws, you just install and go. You KNOW it will work with everyone else.

That's the big achilles heel of Linux and BSD. Microsoft isn't developing Office for them. That's even the big selling point of OSX as a Unix desktop. It has Office without a lot of hassle. YEah the OSX version has problems and isn't 100% compatible with everything. But by and large it is install and go with few worries.

I'd bet that if Microsoft got worried about Apple all they'd have to do to seriously damage them is stop developing Office.

Of course

[jhujoe]

I always take every opportunity I can get to introduce free / open / SENSIBLE software to people who are not typically "tech" oriented, and who tend to fall into the M$ vortex fairly easily.

I have converted several non-tech people over to Open Office, and they like it BETTER. It is faster, and cheaper. On a side note, I've also been spreading the word of Mozilla (the average user DOES want to use cool features like tabbed browsing, no popups, image blocking, etc. You just have to take the 5 minutes necessary to sit down an d introduce the benefits to them.

Re:That seems like a good idea at first, but...

[Jon-o]

Of course, rtf is a very limited format - it lacks stuff that you really need to even a simple academic paper. (as does abiword, I might add)

We could really use something between rtf/ascii and ps/pdf files - editable, but still cross-platform, and preferably usable by many different programs. OO's format is a good start, but it won't really help matters until more things support it - in MS land, but also in linuxland.

Re:Not worth it.

[Degrees]

I 100% agree. Heck, being a brand new OpenOffice user, I haven't found where (or if) I can set the default file save mode to "Word97".

I have to do a weekly status report that gets emailed to all my co-workers and several managers. OpenOffice does MAPI, so GroupWise mails the document just fine. And compatible documents by OpenOffice, week after week, will open eyes. However, there is always the one picky manager (PHB) waiting to pounce. If I or another co-worker forget to save the thing in Word97 format just once, he will use it as a club to beat us 'wild ducks' into corporate submission. If I slip up, and he cannot read my status report, I will not be able to tell him the problem is his lack of a plugin. He is running the corporate standard. I'm the outsider trying to open the environment to allow for greater options.

Thankfully, OpenOffice has worked well so far. It even got rid of an annoying startup macro error message I had with the status report sample file. I had just resigned myself to living with this stupid MS Word error - every single time I opened the file, it spit at me. But OpenOffice is smarter than that. Hooray! Thank you Thank you Thank you to the programmers of OpenOffice!