March 31, 2007 Views (3,685) /  Opine! /  Trackback (0) / Digg/Share

Have a bunch of clumsy Word documents that become huge and it takes the good old MS Word minutes to open it? Here’s a tip.

Open the file in OpenOffice (at version 2.2 at the time of this writing), save it as Word .doc, reopen in Word itself, and voila — the file opens without much pain. This is especially useful with documents written in languages other than English, and if you have pictures in them.

Same with Excel. Have password-protected cells? Open the spreadsheet with in OpenOffice Calc, just uncheck ‘protection’, re-save as an Excel file, and you’re good to go. Really helps when the original spreadsheet designer has left the company and something needs changed.

For those who say OpenOffice isn’t “truly compatible with MS Office”, well, MS Office isn’t fully compatible with MS Office. Tried Office 2007 yet? The interface revamp was supposed to be a major breakthrough, but it’s just pesky. Here’s a quote from OpenOffice 2.2 release notes.

While OO isn’t exactly the most efficient (memory hog alert) it is a fantastic option for start-ups and people who’re unwilling to fork for an overpriced office suite when office tools are going online (think Google Docs, thinkfree, and such).

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