.doc files 9x/XP difference.

Out of curiosity, I downloaded OpenOffice onto my XP machine. It all seemed pretty good, (a little slow perhaps), until I opened my CV, a .doc file. Everything seemed okay but the last line of the first page had moved to the first line of the second.

At first, I took this to be a "feature" of OpenOffice, but no. I loaded OpenOffice onto my oldest machine with 95 on it, and there, it looks exactly the same as in Word.

After a load of fiddling, it appears to me that certain documents appear different, (in both Word and OpenOffice), depending on the OS. This I find a little worrying. If I have nicely formatted a document on one system then e-mail it to a customer/contractor etc., and they use a different OS they may see a poorly formatted result creating a "sloppy" impression.

Anyone else seen this?

Interesting indeed. My dad tried out OpenOffice and seems to really like it but hasn't mentioned anything like you've said, but I don't know if he's been faced with the same dilemma.

So I guess my answer is, no, haven't seen it, can't really help you.

only thing I have seen with openoffice, I haven't used it much, I just started using it a few days ago. But I tried to save it under XP .doc, and I know it says potential data loss, and it does lose some formatting. I reopened a file, and the bullets were gone, so i had to go back and rebullet it. Anyways, that is all I have experienced, so I think that formatting is the issue when saving to anything other than .sxw, or at least to .doc.

Yeah, I noticed that too. Not a problem if you are printing things out, but if you are sending them to someone who is going to use Word, it is a potential disaster.

I also have had minor formatting problems with their spreadsheet graphing tools.

Since the cores are the same, I guess StarOffice has the same trouble.

I suppose I'll be sticking with MS-Office.

I have raised this as an issue with OpenOffice.org.

The business with the bullet points is already on the list, (several different problems actually).

I don't have MS Office, and my english teacher wants things saved in Word, so that we could give him a disc at the end of the year with our saved files. And the formatting is something i worry about, and openoffice writer is the only word processor i have that saves under 97/2k/xp .doc.

OpenOffice is pretty good as far as I've seen.. I used StarOffice for a year before OpenOffice and I've been using OpenOffice since. I too live among teachers which require word format, and some friends only have access to Word.

Generally the formatting remains the same between the two unless I start using fancier features of OpenOffice, I'd recommend always keeping your doc in .sxw until you need to export it to word format, and when you do that export to the version of word your (teacher/friend/whoever) has to avoid more than one conversion (SXW->97->XP loses more data probably)

Maybe touch it up in Word after you export if you feel that is needed.

>>> Maybe touch it up in Word after you export if you feel that is needed.

The point of course being, that people using OpenOffice probably do not have Word.

The problem I have seen is the other way round. I import a relatively simple document saved by Word into OO on a 95 machine, it is formatted one way, the same document imported into the same OO, (installed from the same downloaded installer), on an XP machine is formatted differently. If I change something in either document and save it again as a .doc, how is it going to look to someone using Word? If I can't rely on it looking the same, then I can't use the product. A silly little misformatting can create a BIG impression on a prospective client.

I do not have Word.

Formatting can go a long way, especially on reports/resumes/etc.

I don't really want to go through more converting, I already have to convert ~ 70 or so files, and I'll just have more to type. So saving it as .doc the first time would save me that hassle. Only formatting lost in most of the files would be bullets, maybe headers, maybe page numbers. Other than that, I haven't seen any data loss yet, so I think I'm okay there.

Quote:

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If I change something in either document and save it again as a .doc, how is it going to look to someone using Word? If I can't rely on it looking the same, then I can't use the product.

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That is where it gets sloppy when people are using different word processors. I didn't really want to buy word, open office is free, ms works came on the comp, and lotus word pro came on my previous comp., but a lot of people assume everyone uses word.

>>> but a lot of people assume everyone uses word.

Exactly, because a lot of people do. If your product, which is marketted as being compatible, is not, then it is useless.

I'm assuming this has nothing to do with header/orphan control, correct?