Slashdot Mirror
Can a Small Business Migrate Smoothly To OpenOffice.org v3?
Pay The Piper writes "As an IT Support Technician in a small corporation, I've been tasked by one of my managers to determine the feasibility of transitioning our small 40 or 50 person office from Microsoft Office 2000 to Open Office 3.0. What are some of the problems I may run into as far as document cross compatibility? Has the Open Office suite evolved to a point that permits easy transition from Microsoft's suite? Besides the obvious 'free vs. expensive' argument, what are some of the pros and cons of transitioning? Are there any reliable ways to view/edit/save a document saved in the OpenXML format through Open Office, or are my co-workers and I still going to be stuck in Microsoftland?" (Given that company-wide rollouts take some time to implement, this early look at the features of OO.o 3.1 may have some relevance, too.)
Our office of 50+ transitioned back in the early 2.0 days with nary a hitch. A couple of people still have MS Office for specific compatibility reasons (certain spreadsheet macros, that sort of thing) but everyone else from IT to the receptionist has OOo. We spent approximately $0.00 on training, instead going with "here's your new word processor". People who need office suites picked up on it quickly and people who primarily do other things didn't really care.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It's not that hard. As other posts say, there will be whiners who don't like change. "Why do we have to do this?" Blah, blah, blah. The reality is that within the organization you don't need MS Office at all. You will only need it for those times when you need to edit docs with others in the outside world. What we did was to make sure we had a couple of machines with Office on them as well as OpenOffice. Office was only used when it absolutely had to be, with all internal docs being OO. Most of the time we would export our OO docs to PDF's and ship those outside of the company. If we needed to ship out a doc to a law firm or some other such entity where it needed to be edited, we would convert the OO to Word and then ship it out, keep it in Word for the edits, and then convert back to OO at the very end (or not, depending). If the whole world used OO, you wouldn't even need to do that. But that can only come when everyone has already done what we've done and you plan to do. I say go for it and save some cash. You won't regret it.
The fact is not EVERYONE needs Office, but some people do. Which baffles me why a corporation wouldn't consider deploying OOo to everyone, and give MS Office to the people who depend on weird MS Office features. This way you save the most money while not slowing your business process!
I renamed the "OO.org Document" icon to "word". Set the defaults to save as ms .doc files. Works great.
THL phish sticks
For the majority of vanilla Excel users ... the road is clear. But not for those of us who work a bit deeper in Finance there are some valid problems. My biggest concerns are availability of add-ins for and interoperability with PeopleSoft, Oracle applications, QuickBooks, Peachtree accounting, SAP, Essbase, Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Financial Management ... Second would be availability of statistical toolkits and other extended function sets.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
I suggest that you also install Gnumeric, since it works a lot better with Excel spread-sheets than OOo Calc does.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Don't tell them anything about change.
Users fear change.
Tell them they are getting an upgraded version of office.
True enough, less fear, less whining, and less pain for you.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I am currently looking for a job (as I suppose a lot of folks are). At home we all use Macs. My Girlfriend has Apple Pages, so I decided to use it. I was astounded how easy it was to make a resumé that looked pretty good from one of the templates. So I applied for a job and sent them the Word export (as I figured word was a default filetype). Not only does the resumé look really bad, many windows users can not open it. So I exported to PDF, same. So I took it to where I work now opened with the current version of word (disaster!)... spent a while fixing it, saved it... and people have trouble opening docx files in the more common older MS Word application.
I am a scientist, not a typesetter! And I wound up doing several iterations of this to get something that older versions of MS Word (running on older versions of windows?).
So bottom line, I used Rich Text and a MS font. I blame this on MS making their applications so picky when opening various competing filetypes.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Office 2000 was released 27 Jan 1999. In one week, it will be a full decade old.
You should also consider GoOO http://go-oo.org/ which is an improved version of OpenOffice.
You're joking, but this can be a serious deterrent to switching for some businesses.
Of course, vital business logic being locked away in an Excel macro is a WTF in and of itself, but sometimes there's no getting around it...
I struggle with OO calc not responding to keyboard shortcuts or simple operations in the same way that Excel does. I wish I could find a shortcut / config file for OO that made it "behave" like excel.
I *like* having CTRL+SHIFT++ inserting a row or column. I like the delete key deleting the value of a cell without giving me a pop-up window. Is there any project or resource out there that makes calc (and other OO apps) "behave" as close to MS office as possible without having to configure it yourself for an entire evening?
I think you're missing a point.
For many slashbots, "common" == those folks who agree with what I think is important, appropriate, or valuable. So, if you need VBscripts or mailmerge, you're out there on the fringe.
A corollary group of slashbots, zealots, extend this to mean that "If my chosen software package doesn't do it, it doesn't ever need to be done. If you think you need it, think again, because you're wrong and stupid."
We need to be honest with the shortfalls of Free or Open software, because love it or hate it, the market leader has pioneered and obscenely large feature set and you can't compete unless you're trying to support the really important ones. The ones that get used in settings outside of Mom's basement, that is.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
But calling your users Luddites and worse sure ain't the way to go.
But he wasn't saying that all protesters were Luddites. I totally agree with everything you said, but also understand his frustration about people who protest all change, regardless of how carefully planned or coordinated with the end users, seemingly for the sake of having something to complain about. Those were the people he is railing against.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
pretty easy to justify I think since the new Office is so different from previous versions. It would almost be a logical point to switch from Office.
However, another issue that can't be overlooked is the compatibility with existing files. There are kinks to how OO.o presents files in the Office formats. The ease of switching may depend largely on how many existing documents you have and the complexity of their formatting. I think I would identify this as the primary issue given that training will need to happen with the new Office or OO.o.
Try Zimbra. It easily replaces Outlook and Exchange with more features and less downtime and administrative headaches. It also come with good virus and spam filtering on the server side, integrates with Blackberries and other mobile devices and can also integrate with third party applications and applicances, like phone systems, crm packages, and more...
If you're exchanging MS Office docs -- particularly ones going through multiple editions of MSWord, it is a commonplace for MS to claim the docs are corrupt and refuse to do anything. Frequently, OpenSource tools like OpenOffice.org or AbiWord read the files perfectly well, and then can save them un-corrupted in ".doc" form. My wife is an attorney, and she has to jump through that hoop all the time.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Short: Actually, no.
Medium: Really, I mean it, you're wrong.
Long: I work in an environment in which we have a mix of OO.O users (typically on Mac OS X Leopard) and MS Office users (a combination of Mac OS X Leopard, Windows Vista, and Windows XP in virtual and native environments). Those of us using MS Office have no trouble with document interchange, except when it comes to the XML vs. binary file formats (older MS office users can't read/open the .xlsx or .docx formats, for example).
Folks on OO.O wind up corrupting files on a regular basis. I'll create a document, send it to an OO.O users for comment, and get back a document with a blue background ... that the OO.o user doesn't know was there, and can't figure out how to remove.
Retraining habits is one thing, but with OO.O you have to settle for a buggy system that can corrupt your files. Small businesses often work for large businesses, and the file interchange with my clients has to be seamless. I had better luck with Apple's iWork than I do with OO.O, but have given up on both in favor of MS Office.
This is a pretty easy business decision. MS Office is $150, and it works. OO.O is free, but I have to spend a couple hours of my time in any given month dealing with some headache it presents. So that means that MS Office is actually cheaper that OO.O.
Hear that OO.O? Come up with software that works well, and I'll jettison MS Office. And so will lots of other businesses.
I agree with this 110% as long as you don't get crazy with the formatting it will be fine.
However in my exp I have found the less a user knows about computers the more crazy formats they will use in Word.
I'd agree with regards to the migration in comparison to 2007, but why make the change if you already have MSO 2000 and OO is very close to the same but with a few less features some need?
On another note, isn't it funny that every time Apple came out with a new OS that wasn't very backward compatible but rather made a large step forward, they were praised for doing so. Each time MS made a small step forward and kept compatibility, they were cursed. Now they make a big step forward and are still cursed. I'm convinced that the only way MS could ever be praised is if they were the size of Apple (the underdog) and had really cool marketing. If you've made the change personally to 2007, you will find that there is a lot to like about it. The Office suite still runs circles around OO and probably always will.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
In my experience, OO.o handles damaged MS Office files far better than MS Office does. I've never known it to fail to open an MS Office 2003 or earlier file, but the formatting can be changed, and of course any VBA in the document is going to be a problem.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
unfortunately, excel is not immune to this truism - I had to "educate" a user at my company who was displeased that a spreadsheet she worked with daily took close to 60 seconds to open, even though it was less than 4MB in size. It turns out she had nearly 1000 WordArt objects embedded in the spreadsheet, and any time she wanted to change the contents of one of the objects, rather than editing or deleting the WordArt object she simply removed the text and created a new object instead. What a nightmare that was, removing hundreds of empty WordArt objects.
And for the record, wtf is a WordArt object doing in a spreadsheet anyway? I don't know who's more stupid - the user who feels the need to add such BS to a business document, or the developers who thought that allowing a user to put such crap in a spreadsheet was a great idea.
I only wish this were the exception, rather than the rule. I had the "controller" (I use quotes because he's not a CPA, though he more or less manages the finances here) ask me today if it was possible to jruy-rig our multifunction copier to work with the color toner cartridges removed, because the cost per page for copying or printing in color was too high, and he didn't trust users to print only in black and white.
Or, just get the ODF plugin for Office. If you're keeping it around, that's probably the easiest solution, and I think it's maintained by Microsoft due to governments that require open formats (MS's OOXML isn't compliant), so it probably works pretty well. I've only used if a few times, but it did the trick for basic docs.
What your company does, But it seems likely to me that there might be many workers who are simple to transition and a few that would be insanely hard.
Why not give everyone OO.o and mandate exclusive use of OO.o for most people that really don't need office but leave some room for the guys that are having problems to use office 2000.
Eventually, office2000 will obsolete itself, and if OO.o truly is a suitable replacement, people will adopt it willingly. For the hard core two or three that justifiably can't move, update them to office 2007, but leave them with OO.o as well.
If OO.o is not suitable for everyone then why hold the company back by mandating it across the board.
Finally, you could split up the packages, ie. use OO.o word processor, GNUmeric and powerpoint.
Nullius in verba
Are your users simply using Word or are there a lot of Excel users also? Because Excel has always been the hang up when I have tried to convert a SMB or SOHO. If they don't use Excel it usually isn't a problem to switch. But if you have a lot of Excel users, especially if the Excel spreadsheets have a lot of VBA macros, then you will be in a world of hurt.
Because IMHO while Writer has come a long way to catching up with Word, and as some users point out with corrupted docs it even beats it, and Impress can have templates added to it(such as OxygenOffice, which IMHO is a better OO.o for professionals and SMBs) but the big stickler is Calc just doesn't compare to Excel. So it will all depend on your users more than anything else. I hope this helps. Good Luck!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Our company switched over to OOo around 2.1 (we just got 3.0 not long ago). Our company has two home offices, one in the states & and in South American. We have several hundred locations worldwide. At first it was a tough sell & to be honest I was not a fan. However, I, along with fellow coworkers in the field, have grown to really appreciate it. In fact, it is all I use at home & at work. I didn't even bother installing MS office on my last PC build. Most, if not all, of the home office users have both OOo & MS office. Occasionally a file will come down the pipe that we can't open, but the second try saved in OOo format works. I can't say much for Power Point as we mainly deal in with the standard word/excel files, or calc/writer if you will. Bottom line, yes you can switch over, but expect some heavily used files not to transfer over flawlessly. Expect users to bitch, but after they're seasoned it'll be just another program.
Don't ever expect migrating from MS is going to be smooth, MS' is software that is designed to screw you up for migrating to something else, expect some pains and costs, that's right, there are gonna be costs, that's the problem with MS software, the bill is usually bigger in the long term.
Also Lol @ the guy that seemed to advertize Novell's fork of open office because it had OOXML filters. News flash: so does Sun's OOo 3.0 ...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"