J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: > On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:30:01 -0500, Denis Beauregard > <denis.b-at-francogene.com@fr.invalid> wrote: > >> Personnally, I use LibreOffice so I can't comment about the >> ease of use of the freewares ! I write what I need with PHP. >> >> >> Denis > > Since you mentioned it... > > Can every document be saved as .doc and every spreadsheet as .xls? I > know they CAN be - but by default? Yes. Default settings are configurable at Tools>Options>Load/Save>General Word options available are 6.0, 95, 97/2000/XP/2003 2003/XML 2007/2010 XML in v 3.6.5. Excel are slightly different, 5.0 instead of 6.0 & also template options. I'm not sure about the new v 4.0. The usual warnings about non-native formats not necessarily representing what you see probably apply but I'm not sure if that's a real problem any more. > Do the menu items mirror 2003 Office or 2007 that needed uBit to make > the menu usable? AFAICS uBit is something that gets rid of the ribbon interface. They're pre-ribbon style if that's what you're asking. It's so long since I used MS Office I'm not sure how close they resemble Office otherwise but you can customise tool bars & select icon size & style. -- Ian The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang at austonley org uk

On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 19:31:57 +0000, Ian Goddard <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in soc.genealogy.computing: >J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: >> On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:30:01 -0500, Denis Beauregard >> <denis.b-at-francogene.com@fr.invalid> wrote: >> >>> Personnally, I use LibreOffice so I can't comment about the >>> ease of use of the freewares ! I write what I need with PHP. >>> >>> >>> Denis >> >> Since you mentioned it... >> >> Can every document be saved as .doc and every spreadsheet as .xls? I >> know they CAN be - but by default? > >Yes. Default settings are configurable at Tools>Options>Load/Save>General > >Word options available are 6.0, 95, 97/2000/XP/2003 2003/XML 2007/2010 >XML in v 3.6.5. Excel are slightly different, 5.0 instead of 6.0 & also >template options. I'm not sure about the new v 4.0. The usual warnings >about non-native formats not necessarily representing what you see >probably apply but I'm not sure if that's a real problem any more. I know at least one problem. I print CD pockets with LO and I want to print the back and face parts vertically. It can print only on the wrong direction in English (in French, it is the opposite direction and it works correctly). 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

Denis Beauregard wrote: > On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 19:31:57 +0000, Ian Goddard > <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in soc.genealogy.computing: > >>J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: >>> On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:30:01 -0500, Denis Beauregard >>> <denis.b-at-francogene.com@fr.invalid> wrote: >>> >>>> Personnally, I use LibreOffice so I can't comment about the >>>> ease of use of the freewares ! I write what I need with PHP. >>>> >>>> >>>> Denis >>> >>> Since you mentioned it... >>> >>> Can every document be saved as .doc and every spreadsheet as .xls? I >>> know they CAN be - but by default? >> >>Yes. Default settings are configurable at Tools>Options>Load/Save>General >> >>Word options available are 6.0, 95, 97/2000/XP/2003 2003/XML 2007/2010 >>XML in v 3.6.5. Excel are slightly different, 5.0 instead of 6.0 & also >>template options. I'm not sure about the new v 4.0. The usual warnings >>about non-native formats not necessarily representing what you see >>probably apply but I'm not sure if that's a real problem any more. > > I know at least one problem. I print CD pockets with LO and > I want to print the back and face parts vertically. It can > print only on the wrong direction in English (in French, it is > the opposite direction and it works correctly). I know there is an issue with portrait/landscape printing in LO. Workaround is to open the Print dialogue, select the Properties of the printer, and there in the Device settings change Printer Language type from PDF to Postscript (from driver). Maybe this helps also for you Herman Viaene -- Veel mensen danken hun goed geweten aan hun slecht geheugen. (G. Bomans) Lots of people owe their good conscience to their bad memory (G. Bomans)

On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 19:31:57 +0000, Ian Goddard <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote: >J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: >> On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:30:01 -0500, Denis Beauregard >> <denis.b-at-francogene.com@fr.invalid> wrote: >> >>> Personnally, I use LibreOffice so I can't comment about the >>> ease of use of the freewares ! I write what I need with PHP. >>> >>> >>> Denis >> >> Since you mentioned it... >> >> Can every document be saved as .doc and every spreadsheet as .xls? I >> know they CAN be - but by default? > >Yes. Default settings are configurable at Tools>Options>Load/Save>General > >Word options available are 6.0, 95, 97/2000/XP/2003 2003/XML 2007/2010 >XML in v 3.6.5. Excel are slightly different, 5.0 instead of 6.0 & also >template options. I'm not sure about the new v 4.0. The usual warnings >about non-native formats not necessarily representing what you see >probably apply but I'm not sure if that's a real problem any more. > >> Do the menu items mirror 2003 Office or 2007 that needed uBit to make >> the menu usable? > >AFAICS uBit is something that gets rid of the ribbon interface. They're >pre-ribbon style if that's what you're asking. It's so long since I >used MS Office I'm not sure how close they resemble Office otherwise but >you can customise tool bars & select icon size & style. > >-- >Ian I thank both of you for the responses. 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. Excel might be a bit sticky if one gets very sophisticated with it I think CNet recommends Libre. Hugh

On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:22:52 GMT, Eagle@bellsouth.net (J. Hugh Sullivan) wrote in soc.genealogy.computing: >I thank both of you for the responses. 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. > >Excel might be a bit sticky if one gets very sophisticated with it > >I think CNet recommends Libre. Some netters thing that LO is updated more frequently and more effort is put in it compared to OOO since OOO/Sun was purchased by Oracle. I have OOO 2 and 3 but use LO on a daily basis. I open files from emails with OOO 3 but work my data files with LO. 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

On 13 Feb 2013 in soc.genealogy.computing, J. Hugh Sullivan wrote: > I thank both of you for the responses. 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. > > Excel might be a bit sticky if one gets very sophisticated with it > > I think CNet recommends Libre. LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org both started from the same codebase. From what I can tell, LibreOffice is being more actively developed than OOo. -- Joe Makowiec http://makowiec.org/ Email: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe Usenet Improvement Project: http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

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.