Shortcomings of OpenOffice and Working Around Them? 236
1mck asks: "Most free office software does the job, and after a hard drive failure, I decided to go MS Office free, so I'm trying out OpenOffice; however, I've noticed that there are a few deficiencies that I'm having a hard time getting around like the 'Shrink to fit' function, and also having PPS files open up directly in 'Presentation' mode rather than in the Edit' mode. Has any one else picked up on other deficiencies in OpenOffice? I realize that it is free, and it won't be as well featured as most purchased software, but when I went on the hunt for the workarounds at the OpenOffice forums, and on the web I've come up with very little to no information at all. Have I chosen the right free software, or would you suggest something else?" What minor irritations and shortcomings have you found in OpenOffice and how have you adjusted to (or worked around) them?
Expectations != Deficiencies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Expectations != Deficiencies (Score:5, Insightful)
Instincts (derived from using Word for too many years) tell me to insert a section and disconnect the headers from the previous sections. I tried and it just makes a complete mess - OO couldn't be this bad could it.
Then decided to bite the bullet and RTFM.
Go to the page, open page styles and select 'first page'. Once I'd done it, it just made so much sense. The Word way is just plain stupid.
Most of the techniques that we have gotten from the Windows/Office world were hard won and difficult to give up, but that doesn't make them right.
Re:Expectations != Deficiencies (Score:3, Interesting)
The one (and only) example I can think of is the way the enter key behaves in the spreadsheet tool. It makes sense to me, if I am entering in a lot of data, I should be able to tab through the rows and when I'm done that row, if I hit enter, it should go back to the first field of the next row. It does this in excel and I would probably switch to OO except this "feature" drives me nuts.
Re:Expectations != Deficiencies (Score:2)
Re:Expectations != Deficiencies (Score:2)
Seriously. The current setup of enter only going one row down...in the same column...this is not a feature to make life easier.
A simple config tick mark or something to enable 'smart return key' or something would be nice.
printing, comma button (Score:2)
Generally the "problems" are because you've only known the MS way. Most (but not all) are behavior I slightly prefer...
The printing is definitely different, and we had training problems getting people to convert. Calc printing had some issues with printing a ton of blank pages, but so does Excel. Generally I think it was superior to MS's tendency to reformat everything...
The problem that literally got it uninstalled and MS purchased on one machine was the lack of a comma butto
PPS Files (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PPS Files (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PPS Files (Score:2)
Tell me it prevents garish and low contrast color schemes, and tiny unreadable fonts, and I'll believe I've died and gone to heaven.
Re:PPS Files (Score:3, Informative)
If you like, OOo also has built-in support to let you export your presentation in Flash format, which supports all those features.
Re:PPS Files (Score:5, Informative)
To make a PPS file open in edit mode, rename it back to PPT. The only difference between a PPS file and a PPT file is the name; PowerPoint doesn't save the bits differently simply because the user chose to save as PPS.
Windows XP N (Score:2)
Their stupid media player program, which is written in Java, requires a whole bloody media framework package installed
And Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows doesn't? What happens when you try to play an embedded .wmv file without the DirectShow framework installed, such as on Windows XP N?
OO cross-references (Score:4, Informative)
Re:OO cross-references (Score:3, Informative)
- Insert->Hyperlink...
- Click 'Document' on left side
- Click "circle" icon besides Target field
- Expand Headings item
- Choose desired heading
- Click Apply, then Close
- Provide Text for document (if desired)
- Click Apply
OSS (Score:3, Informative)
OO is neat package, especially for Linux systems, but there's no denying it has some catching up to do to compete feature for feature with MS Office. One bug that's really annoyed me with the latest 2.0 release is that it crashes everytime I import a csv file into Calc, save it and then try to forward the file via my mail client. I haven't investigated it, so I don't know if it does with all open documents, or if it's specific to what I did above. I've filed a bug report, though.
Anyway, I'd suggest this url: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Main_Page [openoffice.org] to the submitter, but it does seem to be developer specific.
Bullet points and indentation are screwy (Score:2)
Bullet points can get really messed up when importing from Word -- even documents that don't have macros.
Indentation is also set at too large an interval. Why not default to 1/4 inch (US Letter), like most everyone else's word processor?
Just like Word, at times the auto formatting gets in the way. This is especially true of bullets and indentation.
Other than that, I have few disagree
Re:Bullet points and indentation are screwy (Score:2)
To be fair, most people in most countries also use kilometers and litres and centigrade as units of measure, but the US doesn't (at least not for everyday things).
US Letter size is not 216x279, it's 8 1/2 x 11 (inches), and it's not based on a predefined aspect ratio.
Not saying it's better, but it's been in use for a very long time (longer than Ax si
Re:Bullet points and indentation are screwy (Score:2)
Re:Bullet points and indentation are screwy (Score:3, Informative)
Yes and because of this the auto-formatting features of OO seem to annoy a lot of users. People get surprisingly upset when OO turns
* Stuff
* More stuff
into a bulleted list. Never mind that at least some versions of MSO do exactly the same thing and the menu item to turn this on/off is in exactly the same place, it 's still the number one exa
OOo (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:OOo (Score:3, Informative)
And who needs object animations, anyway?
Re:OOo (Score:2)
I'm uncertain, but the grandparent may have been referring to being able to write formulas in OO.o Writer, rather than use formul
Strings not treated as numbers (Score:4, Informative)
Issue 5658 [openoffice.org]
Re:Strings not treated as numbers (Score:4, Informative)
Except that that isn't what happens. You can calculate with strings -- it treats them as 0 instead of giving an error. As some people pointed out in the bug report, if it gave an error people would know that something needs to be fixed. As it is, they get a "wrong" answer with no indication that there was a problem.
standards and needs (Score:2)
But finally, is the MS suite fitting the real needs? How fast is it adapting to the new needs?
Or rather is it defining the needs?
All software has bugs, is error prone and shows deficiencies in some way. With no exception.
One point is whether the manufacturer can (try to) fix, adapt and evolve that software in a reasonable timeframe.
Another one is whether the suite can be used among different environments, na
Compatibility with MS Office (Score:2, Insightful)
It is getting better (OpenOffice 2.0 is a big leap forward), but I still find that there are issues. These seem to be far worse for spreadsheets and presentations than for word processe
Re:Compatibility with MS Office (Score:2)
Then that's easy - PDF. If you definitely want to be able to edit each others documents that is a different story, but the number of quotes and other things that you would NEVER want to recipient to be able to edit that I've recieved in an editable format is utterly ridiculous.
Also, we are in these days of the web - powerpoint is somewhat dated and limiting even in comparison to mid 1990's html. So many presentations end up on an int
Re:Compatibility with MS Office (Score:3, Insightful)
PDF is a display/publishing format.... its useless for collaboration.
Re:Compatibility with MS Office (Score:4, Informative)
I was overjoyed about a year ago when the word came down from our new CEO that we should try to wean ourselves off M$ Office. I had been trying to do that for 5 years, but he did it in one email.
I have, sorry to say, switched back. First, it was trying to print Excel files from Calc. I just can't afford all that wasted paper. Excel went back on my machine.
Then I had to update a manual written in Word. Writer (00 v.2) ate ALL the graphics in the entire manual and went on to balls-up the fonts and formatting. I reported the error and got a message back from the coder that this bug would be fixed in the next release - and that my report was one of hundreds. So Word went back on my machine.
Then there was the boss's powerpoint. He worked all day, built this file in Presenter (or whatever it's called), unfortunately he saved it in ppt format instead of the native format. Went back to it the next day. WHAT A MESS! Every slide had to be redone. Powerpoint went back on his and my machines.
We use Access databases all the time. Base has never been up to the tasks we throw at it, or compatible enough to replace Access.
So that's my sad story of trying to convert an office to OO. I know it's mostly not OO's fault (except for the graphic-eating bug), and their word processor and presentation software is much easier to use (IMHO) than M$'s bizarre shite, but until EVERBODY stops using M$, I'm stuck with it. (at least we haven't bought a NEW version of Office - and have no plans to - just reinstalled the ol' 2000 version)
Stella
Well featured software? (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize that
With OpenOffice I can easily "send as pdf-document" or export my presentation into flash animation and publish it on the Web.
With OpenOffice I can save my valuable data in standard format (OpenDocument) so that ten years from now it will still be readable with any standards compliant word processing software no matter what my operating system is.
From my perspective OpenOffice seems to be well featured software compared to the "most purchased software" :-)
Re:Well featured software? (Score:2, Interesting)
Office 2007 will support PDF. (Although that isn't a great reason to pay for the upgrade price...)
"From my perspective OpenOffice seems to be well featured software compared to the "most purchased software"
OO is quite good. However, the original quote you posted here is still correct. OO doesn't have Outlook, for example. Those who don't know the difference between Outlook
Re:Well featured software? (Score:2)
no doubt acompanied by shrieking outrage
AAAH!! ANTITRUST!!!!
Re:Well featured software? (Score:5, Insightful)
Limited rows in spreadsheets are such a pain (Score:2)
Re:Limited rows in spreadsheets are such a pain (Score:2)
Have you considered using a database? Spreadsheets are suited to being a cross of a desktop calculator and a word processor; if you want to be storing vast amounts of data, I'd recommend using a tool designed for it...
Re:Limited rows in spreadsheets are such a pain (Score:4, Funny)
Have you really considered the effort to teach the marketing department how to use a database???
Re:Limited rows in spreadsheets are such a pain (Score:2)
Re:Limited rows in spreadsheets are such a pain (Score:2)
Re:Limited rows in spreadsheets are such a pain (Score:2)
Don't be ridiculous. Everybody this *this* feature or *that* bugfix is the most important and will result in World Domination. Check out IssueZilla, it's full of bug reports that say "OMG this is the ONE THING that's holding up our Fortune-5 company from adopting OO".
Re:Limited rows in spreadsheets are such a pain (Score:2)
That being said, Gnumeric is an excellent spreadsheet which allows you to set both the row and column limit at compile time. They also plan to allow it to be
Video in presentations (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Video in presentations (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Video in presentations (Score:2)
I hear you. Recently I needed to display video as part of a presentation, and discovered there was no easy way to do it. I found this note [openoffice.org] about the current lack of video support in OOo2, but also information about a Java plugin from IBM that could play MPEG4. Unfortunately I was never able to get the Java option to work.
After alot of experimenting, googling and hacking, I came up with a solution that did the job for me: I added small "video
Re:Video in presentations (Score:2)
Broders ? (Score:2)
(OOo uses something like
If the goal is to transition people over, this little difference shouldn't exist!
Sunny Dubey
Re:Broders ? (Score:2)
OOo's default margins are MUCH better IMHO.
Charts are lacking... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Charts are lacking... (Score:2)
I've had the misfortune of teaching first year engineering students how to do some very simple graphing exercises in MS Excel with very simple stress-strain data. When the practical session was upgraded from MS works to MS Excel on the expectation that they would all know how tou use MS Excel it became clear that the graphing function is designed for pretty pie charts in marketing demonstrations - everything else demands a lot of non-obvious steps a
Re:Charts are lacking... (Score:3, Interesting)
The main problem I've had with graphing engineering data in Excel is that it's limited to 32768 (or maybe 65536, I forget) rows. I'd often exceed that trying to pull in data from, say, a digital scope or logic analyzer. Other than that, I found it had some screwy defaults but otherwise worked reasonably well. For my data, anyway; YMMV. I mostly used it to plot XY data.
You're right, though, that it's primarily designed for pie charts. I never did find a way to get it to automatically export the equati
Reference Manager (Score:4, Insightful)
Workaround: Use MS Office+Reference Manager/Endnote, unfortunately.
Re:Reference Manager (Score:4, Informative)
Also: MS Office + Endnote really isn't that great! Different versions of Endnote do have major compatibility programs & it is often hard to collaborate on a document which has Endnote markup. One colleague of mine even uses LaTeX & bibtex & LaTeX2RTF for any document that will have references, as his tolerance for Endnote is so low. Endnote's data model is dated & is still stuck in the dark ages of poor character encoding. They've tried to improve it over the years & it is the best commercial product available, but it isn't (and shouldn't be) the end goal for ANY ONE developing a solution from scratch.
Re:Reference Manager (Score:2)
Re:Reference Manager (Score:2)
Re:Reference Manager (Score:2)
Re:Reference Manager (Score:2)
words (Score:2)
Re:words (Score:2, Informative)
Re:words (Score:2)
it doesn't have a grammar checker, and knowing how bad I am at this stuff I would really like one; I know it won't be perfect but it might be nice.
I know I can sound bitter and trollish but... have you considered to learn grammar better as a solution? You can't always be sure you'll have a software grammar checker under your hands. :)
It takes ages to startup... (Score:2)
Different experience (Score:2)
Re:It takes ages to startup... (Score:2)
If you use it often enough for the startup time to annoy you, why close it?
Just leave it minimized somewhere and let it swap out.
With lots of swap and multiple desktops I don't understand this obsession with closing every little program if you're not using it for a few minutes.
Re:It takes ages to startup... (Score:2)
One guy that had that problem in my office did not have hard disk DMA turned on - and OpenOfficeOrg does a huge amount of disk access when it starts. Another thing is that version 2 is faster, and I've run it on very slow laptops at a decent speed and would never have considered putting the earlier version on a sub 200MHz machine (laptops with serial ports are scarce and worth keepin
Garbled Window Title (Score:2)
Don't use Calc (Score:2)
Another issue is its formula handling. All spreadsheets since Visicalc recongize any of the numeric operations (+ - / *) as the beginning of a formula -- Calc doesn't (it only recongizes the = sign).
Re:Don't use Calc (Score:2)
Well, that may be an incompatibility problem, but I suggest that Excel et. al. are stupid to allow numeric operation symbols to do this in the first place. If you have to provide an initial symbol to indicate a formula, why create a muck pile by allowing more than one? Other than insipid things like "= -C3" you're not saving a whole bunch of keystro
It's The Little Things (Score:4, Informative)
For the record, the "biggest" problem my power user faces is how the Enter key behaves after entering data across several horizontal cells. In MS, Enter will move the cursor down on row and back to the first column that data was entered. For example, B3 -> B4 -> B5 Enter C3. OO does not have this behavior. The Enter key can be customized, but only to go one cell down (default), up, left, or right. Searching the forums confirmed that other MS users are also frustrated by this missing behavior. I tried a quick macro, but no luck.
Re:It's The Little Things (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's The Little Things (Score:2)
Problems with Writer (Score:3, Informative)
Keyboard usability
Problem: There is no straightforward way to set keyboard shortcuts for assigning/removing styles, inserting specific special characters, etc. For non-trivial documents, this means repeated use of the mouse/toolbars/insert character dialog are required.
Workaround: Macros can be used, though this is slow and awkward.
Typographical weaknesses
Problem: Support for high-quality typography is poor. In particular, support for professional-grade OpenType fonts is weak, with some of the best (the Zapfino Extra family is a clear example) not rendering properly at all on screen and even being substituted with completely different fonts in PDF output. No advantage is taken of features like ligatures, true small caps, different figure styles, stylistic and contextual alternates, and similar refinements. More generally, the layout algorithms (e.g., for H&J) are poor.
Workaround: There isn't really one: these are straight-up missing features or outright bugs. However, DTP packages already provide this sort of feature routinely, and more significantly, new versions of MS Office are likely to take advantage of the OpenType rendering support in Windows. OpenOffice's cross-platform nature may be a liability here.
Poor support for formal, structured documents
Problem: There is very limited support for things like structured headings and matching tables of contents (try generating two tables, one with only chapter titles+subtitles and one with chapter titles+all subheadings, or formatting a table of contents significantly differently from the default styles). There is no direct support for bibliographies. The UI for bullets, numbering and list styles is poor.
Workaround: Short of typing things in manually (or editing the auto-generated version every time) there's not much you can do. Cross-references can do a limited amount to support bibliographies within a single document.
Poor support for complex page layouts
Problem: Features like frames don't always work as expected. There seem to be several obscure bugs where multiple frames are concerned. Features like overlapping frames and transparency aren't supported.
Workaround: Usually patience or ingenuity, IME.
Start-up times are very long
Problem: It takes forever to load Writer the frst time.
Workaround: Get a faster machine? :-)
Mail merge support is very poor
Problem: Various. The UI is confusing. Output options are limited. (Can you merge to a single file in the latest version? You couldn't the last time I tried it.) The data source system is bug-ridden to the point that it's easier to start again and set up a new source if the slightest thing goes wrong.
Workaround: I've never found one for most of this, although some limitations can be overcome by merging-to-print and using a cheat printer driver that outputs to PostScript/PDF or similar.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Problems with Writer (Score:2)
Me too, but since I learned TeX I also don't understand why anyone uses LaTeX.
TWW
Re:Problems with Writer (Score:2)
Those are two layouts I use all the time, and they don't seem all that complicated to me. I'd expect them from a word processor, and shouldn't need a dedicated page-layout engine. But I use OO
Re:Problems with Writer (Score:2)
Essential commands are not working (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Essential commands are not working (Score:2)
Images (Score:2)
Print Gridlines (Score:2)
(Found out: it's on Format -> page, but that's not possible with a read-only file, since Format->Page is greyed out!)
Also, setting the print area, and it was hard to figure out how to get a randomly sized spreadsheet to print in a scale of (1 page tall by x wide) or (1 page wide by x tall) (found out: it's also in Format-> Page, likewise with the read-only).
Address Label system (Score:2)
Calc (Score:2)
available special options are reliant upon the phase of the moon and a PRNG.
And while I'm not sure if they actually do anything with them, it is interesting
to note that OOo's bug tracker lets anyone cast a few votes on what they consider
to be major bugs.
Histograms (Score:2)
bullets aren't bullets aren't bullets (Score:2)
If I create a new document in OpenOffice and put in bullets and then save it and open it in Word 2003, the bullets are screwed.
If I create a new document in Word 2003, put bullets in it and then save it and open it in OpenOffice the bullets are screwed.
This means that I am stuck modifying my CV and customer facing docu
1 missing feature: calendar (Score:2)
Does anyone have a free product that will replace this? I kid you not - but everyone who will not switch to open office where i work cite this as their ONLY complaint. Reminders, collaboration (the ability to send reminders on the calendar to other outlook users) and the horrible program that is outlook is why i cannot switch them.
Can anyone recomend somethi
Could you wait on Lightning? (Score:2)
Platform Support (Score:2)
Sadly, in an environment with significant parts Windows, Mac, Linux, and other, the lack of a decent Mac version of OpenOffice is an issue. Sure there is the NeoOffice/J which is fine, if a bit slow, for OpenOffice 1.x, but nothing for OpenOffice 2.x. Mind you, MS Office is no better, with Office running only under WINE for Linux. Lets hope standards support becomes a must have, soon and we can get some real tool independence.
OOo's biggest shortcoming (Score:2)
It's great because it makes a fairly easy drop-in replacement for MS Word. It's bad because MS Word is a terrible, terrible product.
Why doesn't anyone ever try to write a Open-Source version of a decent Word Processor, like WordPerfect or ClarisWorks?
PHP and downloading tables (Score:2, Interesting)
Using PHP and the following headers works fine if you want to generate a HTML table and dump it into Excel.
header("Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
Using the following to open the table in OOo doesn't work. (It didn't for me at least)
header("Content-Type: application/vnd.sun.xml.calc");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
Luckily
Graphs! (Score:3, Informative)
I am a scientist, and I generate dozens of what Excel likes to call "x-y scatter plots" every day. They tend to be mildly complicated, but thats OK. I like tricks like multiple axes, ease of changing scales and labels and legends, and also the ability to make each graph its own sheet in the workbook.
I have spent time trying, but I have to conclude that OOO is just bad at all of this.
On the other hand, I have been quite pleased with Gnumeric for my spreadsheet needs.
And I also recognize that I am a specialist with a niche need, so I'm not expecting to have my requests fulfilled anytime soon. I realize that the more picky, demanding, and unusual you are the less likely that there is an open source option waiting for you.
My $0.02.
I recently switched... (Score:2)
I was struggling a couple of weeks ago to get MS Word to number my damn outline sections properly and was getting nowhere. So I downloaded OpenOffice and guess what? It not only opened the document fine but my numbering problem went away! I was impressed with just how many features there are in Open Write. Most are as good or better than Word. I was really surprised how easy it was to switch. I'm a believer!
The spreadsheet looks just as promising. Of course any Office Basic Application macros won't
OpenOffice != MSOffice (Score:3, Informative)
The 2 biggest issues I have had with OO, is 1) graphing; 2) I have no idea what each program is from their name ( except writer ). Maybe this is just a fedora 4 menu name thing.
You CAN have trendlines (Score:2)
Make a chart, click on it & select Insert->statistics. Choose the trendline you want & any statistical information you want to use.
For most power users, it is more difficult to work around the deficiencies in plotting in any spreadsheet softwre & they'd be better off with a stand-alone program to do i
Re:You CAN have trendlines (Score:2)
Re:Trendlines (Score:2)
You're a college student, in the EE department. Ask any one of a number of your classmates to introduce you to Matlab. You'll only regret it for about the first day while you learn the syntax. I guarantee your EE department, if not your school in general, has free copies on lab computers for you to use.
If you're looking for som
Re:Trendlines (Score:2)
Re:Trendlines (Score:2)
I will agree that Excel is O.K. for "quick-and-dirty" plots & is certainly easier/faster than the other spreadsheet options out there.
The problem is the "dirty" part of quick-and-dirty. You don't need to use a mat
Re:Trendlines (Score:2)
Beca
Re:Trendlines (Score:2)
Because it's convenient for a thousand other related tasks, maybe? And, out of curiosity, why would you put an apostrophe in the middle of the word "want"?
Re:Trendlines (Score:2)
Re:Upgrade your computer is the best workaround! (Score:2)
Re:Trendlines/Regressions? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Multilingual support in OO (Score:2)
This is not a problem with OOo, but with the Portuguese localization. The Bulgarian localization (OOo 2) handles this same issue just fine.