Easing Compatibility Between OpenOffice, MS Office

Jane Walker writes "An office suite expert describes how to format documents in OpenOffice and Microsoft office using program features that will make ease compatibility headaches." From the article: "No two office suites are alike, and the more manual, highly controlled items you have in your document, the more likely the formatting will get messy when you go from one office suite to another. But if you use the formatting capabilities to indent and add spacing--well, that's more like just labeling a box Kitchen and putting the box somewhere that makes sense. The formatting tips in this article will also give you more professional-looking documents that are easier to update when the content or formatting rules change."

A simpler way

[iamdrscience]

Go to "Save as" and select the type ".txt". You'll never have to worry about formatting isssues ever again.

Good tips

[suv4x4]

However from practise, any tips how to react in these situations:

ME: "Please don't use enter for spacing between paragraphs, it's wrong"
CO: "You pedantic freak! It's exactly the same on the screen, and when I print it it won't even be there, who cares?"

CO: "Shit Word is retarded, the tab ends on different places each line, what the HELL is that?"
ME: "Use indenting, it's more predictable"
CO: "Indenting? Why do you never explain what I wanna know, I don't care what indenting is, I wanna fix the damn tabs"

CO: "Oh great, perfect, I wanna make all headlines gray, this means whole hour hunting them down and reformatting it. THANK YOU WORD, BUT NO THANK YOU."
ME: "Man.. this is why I told you to use Headings 1, 2, 3... It's easy to format at once from the styles palette, and you also get automatic Outline view and Table of Contents..."
CO: "Oh shut up, geek..."

Re:A simpler way

[uNople]

I agree. I just migrated my finances spreadsheet from openoffice calc to a text document. I expect to spend way less time waiting for it to load.

Re:Good tips

[cerberusss]

<dream>

I have had great success in advising to use LaTeX in these situations!

CO: "OMG, Word is, like, total crap!"
Me: "I can advise LaTeX."
CO: "Great! Can you get me a Linux shell?"

</dream>

Re:from a designers point of view

[ajs318]

Why do you use an interactive editor to do piddling changes? That's what sed(1) was invented for, surely?!