OpenOffice Documents to MS office & vice-versa

cozumel · Apr 22, 2006, 04:36 PM

The charity which employs me works with people with poor mental/physical health, post traumatic stress (usually from war), domestic violence, ex-offenders, victims of childhood abuse, drug & alcohol misuse and so on and so on....

Many of the documents, applications and referral forms that I complete arrive via e-mail from central government, prison services or other similar organisation and are usually in Microsoft format. On a trial run of Ubuntu last week (at work) I noticed that most MS documents transfer easily to Linux. But documents with more complicated formatting end up being slightly altered.

Documents that I need to transmit I can save as PDF on Linux OpenOffice so there is no problem for my outgoing stuff. But documents that arrive and require me to complete present a problem. Do I need to reformat all these documents manually each time they arrive? Or is their an applet/program that can do this automatically. Manually formatting would be time consuming and would effect my productivity? I really don't have enough hours as it is (and neither do my colleagues). Any ideas pls?

Just to be absolutely clear, this charity has 2 offices and 2 day centres in London that are networked. Ubuntu network goes live next week and we will no longer have Microsoft system. This applet/program must be free or very low cost 'cos we have limited financial resources.

Thank you.

P.S. Message to moderators and others:
I don't want to p**s people off by starting new threads needlessly. Just that I'm new to internet and this is first forum I ever used and I have found the views and experience of others invaluable. It's a steep learning curve. Reason for new thread is that it touches on slightly new subject that I felt other users may find useful and not just me. Is this the correct useage. If not please erase this thread Mr Moderator. God you have power!!

Kombatant · Apr 23, 2006, 07:04 PM

First of all you don't have to worry about creating too many threads, if you have many questions, you'll make many threads, simple as that

Now to your question; as far as I know such an applet doesn't exist unfortunately. What you can do though, if you really need 100% Microsoft Office compatibility is to... well... run Microsoft Office. There is a product called Crossover Office - you can find more details about it here: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/.

Hope I helped somewhat

cozumel · Apr 24, 2006, 06:13 PM

Thanks Kombatant.
Anyone else got any good suggestions please?

Its for a good cause...

UberLord · Apr 26, 2006, 05:31 AM

Why limit yourself to OpenOffice?

For example, I find KWord able to import various Word documents perfectly.