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?"

Comments

Only for sharing documents

[56]

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:Count Two

[Zonk (troll)]

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

Re:Count Two

[DaedalusHKX]

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.

Missing the point

[mpapet]

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:Don't give in!

[julesh]

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:Count Two

[afroborg]

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.