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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?
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?
You should also consider GoOO http://go-oo.org/ which is an improved version of OpenOffice.
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!"
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?