Shortcomings of OpenOffice and Working Around Them?

1mck asks: "Most free office software does the job, and after a hard drive failure, I decided to go MS Office free, so I'm trying out OpenOffice; however, I've noticed that there are a few deficiencies that I'm having a hard time getting around like the 'Shrink to fit' function, and also having PPS files open up directly in 'Presentation' mode rather than in the Edit' mode. Has any one else picked up on other deficiencies in OpenOffice? I realize that it is free, and it won't be as well featured as most purchased software, but when I went on the hunt for the workarounds at the OpenOffice forums, and on the web I've come up with very little to no information at all. Have I chosen the right free software, or would you suggest something else?" What minor irritations and shortcomings have you found in OpenOffice and how have you adjusted to (or worked around) them?

Comments

Expectations != Deficiencies

[mswope]

Is it possible that you've expected behavior from OO? I'm not certain that OO's credo is to "replace" M$ Office as an exact copy. However, they probably intend to include *equivalent* functionality in most cases. So, simply opening in a different state ("edit" vs. "Presentation" mode) is a case of you expecting an M$ Office behavior when working with an entirely separate, discrete, different, non-Microsoft Office piece of software.

Re:Expectations != Deficiencies

[PinkyDead]

I agree, working in OO the other night, I wanted a different header for the front page. I've been using OO since its early versions but there are still some things I haven't got to grips with yet and this was one of them.

Instincts (derived from using Word for too many years) tell me to insert a section and disconnect the headers from the previous sections. I tried and it just makes a complete mess - OO couldn't be this bad could it.

Then decided to bite the bullet and RTFM.

Go to the page, open page styles and select 'first page'. Once I'd done it, it just made so much sense. The Word way is just plain stupid.

Most of the techniques that we have gotten from the Windows/Office world were hard won and difficult to give up, but that doesn't make them right.

Compatibility with MS Office

[smcleish]

The biggest problem I have is compatibility with MS Office. I have been using Open/Star Office for some years, but I work with people who want to work with MS Office products, so this has been a major issue for me. I really need both way compatibility - my line manager likes me to be able to read his documents and vice versa.

It is getting better (OpenOffice 2.0 is a big leap forward), but I still find that there are issues. These seem to be far worse for spreadsheets and presentations than for word processed documents, and I have ended up using gnumeric for spreadsheets rather than OpenOffice Calc; I would be doing the same for presentations, but I've not got round to checking out some of the alternatives. It is mainly formatting that is a problem, with different page breaks on Word documents sent me by colleagues, occasionally text hidden behind graphics etc. Although the problem with presentations seems the same, my presentations tend to confuse Powerpoint's layout engine much more severely: one bullet point that goes over the page boundary, and all the fonts from then on get massively confused. (WMy manager and I recently co-authored a presentation for the Internet2 spring meeting, and ended up sending text files containing the bullet point text as well as the Powerpoint files in order to be able to work together.) Font compatibility is probably a major cause of these issues, so it's not all precisely OpenOffice's fault. However, it should be easier for a novice to create documents which are readable.

Re:Compatibility with MS Office

[duffbeer703]

"use PDF"

PDF is a display/publishing format.... its useless for collaboration.

Well featured software?

[jbrax]

Cliff wrote:
I realize that ... it won't be as well featured as most purchased software

With OpenOffice I can easily "send as pdf-document" or export my presentation into flash animation and publish it on the Web.

With OpenOffice I can save my valuable data in standard format (OpenDocument) so that ten years from now it will still be readable with any standards compliant word processing software no matter what my operating system is.

From my perspective OpenOffice seems to be well featured software compared to the "most purchased software" :-)

Re:Well featured software?

[dbIII]

With OpenOffice I can save my valuable data in standard format

This is a very important point - some of you may remember the different MS Word97 versions that could not open files produced by each other. The first annoying thing is they came in identical packaging, the second was the MS suggested solution was to use the RTF format and live with the problem for three years. The real answer was to install every machine in the building from the same disk and keep all the others snug in their plastic wrap and be prepared for complaints if someone let *.doc format files out of the building.

Reference Manager

[Dr. GeneMachine]

Shortcoming: No decent reference/literature managment system available.
Workaround: Use MS Office+Reference Manager/Endnote, unfortunately.

Re:Trendlines/Regressions?

[joeljkp]

Yeah, and what about charts in general? As far as I know, the only way to create a multi-series graph is to manually reformat your data in the spreadsheet, moving around columns and stuff. This is completely unacceptible, especially when Excel has that extremely easy-to-use series editor.

Re:Trendlines

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnuplot is freeware, but not FOSS. From their FAQ:

Gnuplot is neither written nor maintained by the FSF. It is not covered by the General Public License, either....

Gnuplot is freeware in the sense that you don't have to pay for it. However it is not freeware in the sense that you would be allowed to distribute a modified version of your gnuplot freely. Please read and accept the Copyright file in your distribution.

http://www.gnuplot.info/faq/faq.html#SECTION000370 00000000000000