On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:47:07 GMT, myths@ic24.net (cecilia) wrote: >On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:22:52 GMT, Eagle@bellsouth.net (J. Hugh >Sullivan) wrote: > >>[...] My grandson was just over to >>look at my non-boot desktop. He uses >>Open Office and recommends it. He >>is synced with any computer. >>[...] > >I ran Open Office 3.2 on the WinXP machine for the first 3 years I had >it and then went back to MS Office because > >(a) I bought a baby laptop that included the possibility of a >3-licence MS Office 2007 at a significant reduction; this would not >have been enough to justify the expenditure except that > >(b) I had had irritation, a few months earlier, setting up index >markers with OO Writer in the OCR'd text of my great-uncle's book >about his mother's ancestors - with MS Word, I could copy and paste >the markers, with OO Writer, I had to do each one separately > >(c) I was constructing (with a tight deadline) a chart of 6 >generations of family, ancestors, most siblings and many of the >cousins, all to fit on 4 A4 slides that I then joined as a rectangle >and reduced to just readable A3 and enlarged to a displayable version >between A1 and A0 (the largest clip-frame I could find in the UK at >the time); I was finding that with OO Impress I could not find how >to position text boxes as closely together as I had years earlier been >able to with Powerpoint 95 - and it was worth adding the learning >curve of the changes between Powerpoint 95 and Powerpoint 2007 to my >tasks for the next fortnight in order to reduce the gaps. Thanks for the comments and explaining your sophisticated use of the software. In an unexpected sort of way it helps - the choice of MS or open software often depends on the planned use. Hugh

On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:24:18 GMT, Eagle@bellsouth.net (J. Hugh Sullivan) wrote in soc.genealogy.computing: >Thanks for the comments and explaining your sophisticated use of the >software. > >In an unexpected sort of way it helps - the choice of MS or open >software often depends on the planned use. One thing to keep in mind is that they are working differently. I use LO on a daily basis to update my database. But, there are some operations not easy to do with LO while easy with Excel. One of them is what I call pivoting data. In my main database, I have links to parents. If I want to compare them, I open my parents' files and the file with data I want to compare, and copy data using this macro : =iNDEX('[mar-1621-1765.xls]mar'!$H:$H;EQUIV(AH1;'[mar-1621-1765.xls]mar'!$D:$D;0);1) In cell AH1 of my file, there is the parent's number for data located in column D of file mar-1621-1765.xls and then I import the column H in this example. Then, I mark the imported cells and copy them to the same place the paste special. I can't do these 2 operations on LO or OOO. Instead, I have to copy to my file the columns I want to use (i.e. same file, not from another file), then I have to select a part of the column, not the whole column. I have to create a new column to paste special. So, I can do it with LO but it is much faster with MS. However, since I use LO almost all the time, I get used to LO. For example, LO will tell me if I cut and paste to a cell with content while Excel won't. But Excel will advise if I drag a cell to another with content and LO won't. To do cut and paste, with Excel you mark, cut, go to target, and paste. But in the meanwhile you can't edit another cell (you'll lose the cut area which is not erased. With LO, you mark and cut (this erases the marked data). Then you have to make some room to receive the cut area, i.e. if you cut 100 lines, you have to insert 100 lines before pasting the new lines. However, if while doing this operation you decide to change a cell, you can do it (the cut area is not lost). LO and Excel are 2 different softwares, working differently. MS, in some idiot action, changed completely the menus of Excel making it a nightmare to work with Excel and almost any other softwares (except Chrome which has no menus). LO is more consistent with the 20 last years of menu-operated softwares. Denis -- Denis Beauregard - généalogiste émérite (FQSG) Les Français d'Amérique du Nord - www.francogene.com/genealogie--quebec/ French in North America before 1722 - www.francogene.com/quebec--genealogy/ Sur cédérom à 1780 - On CD-ROM to 1780