Writer / MS Word compatibility?

I've searched for a straighforward answer to this but haven't as yet found one.

Can I use the Writer software in the basic Aspire One to work on documents created under MS Word 2000? I would need to import, edit and resave for export back to my main Windows PC. Are there any Writer/Word compatibility issues?

Or should I simply go for the Windows model of the Aspire, or perhaps get the Linux model and install Windows onto it?

Many thanks,

Bert Coules

 

Open Office has no problems with the old word 2000 format; unless you have extremely complex structures ?

You could of course always download Open Office to your windows machine and check how well it works. It is free after all

 

Hi, thanks for the speedy reply. I'm not familiar with Open Office: I'll check it out.

Bert

 

main link: http://www.openoffice.org/
The version installed on the One is 2.4.x. Upgrading to 3.0 however is relatively easy - so up to you which version to try out.

 

Oh, so the Aspire One comes with Open Office already installed? I didn't realise that; I thought that the bundled word-processor was called simply "Writer". I had visions of having to install it myself and was wondering how hard that would be.

I'm currently downloading 3.0 to my main desktop machine, but perhaps to be really sure of compatibility I should grab 2.4.2, which I see is still available. Thanks for the link.

Bert

 

That's Open Office

 

Right, thanks!

Edited to add:

Now, this is proving interesting. I downloaded and installed Open Office with no problems, and tried loading a few of my Word files from my desktop's HDD: they all came up perfectly, formatting, layout, everything.

Then I tried saving a document from Word to a 1Gb USB memory stick and reopening from there with Open Office - this is what I planned to do with the Acer. The result was a bit of a mess, with some formatting preserved but some - especially the page lengths, for some reason - all wrong.

So I'm now off on a search for information about sorting that out.

Bert

 

Yes, you will be able to open it on Microsoft Word 2000, but you do need to save it in *.doc format or "Microsoft Word 95/98/2000/XP. To save it in that format all the time go to Tools » Properties » Load/Save. Good Luck!

Gvido

 

Gvido, thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, all the test files I tried were in .doc form, and still the formatting was affected.

Bert

 

The biggest problem with maintaining formatting is keeping fonts straight. The *exact* fonts must be installed. The Acer comes with "Liberation" fonts, which supply this compatibility, so you should be ok.

If you went MS Office -> USB stick -> Computer with OpenOffice, the font availability may have been "mangled", causing grief.

Note that if you stick to "Arial", etc (the normal MS fonts) -- you can simply copy these fonts over to the AA1 as well.

Personally, I prefer Writer to Word (just been using it for a long time). Calc is compatible with Excel, Impress with PowerPoint. You will probably find the versions pre-installed on the AA1 to be usable; I would try it out before upgrading to OpenOffice 3. If you do a lot of presentations, Impress in OpenOffice 3 has a new feature which allows speaker notes, etc. to be put onto the internal monitor, while the presentation is on the VGA (which is why I upgraded to 3).

 

Belated thanks for that. I think the problem is now solved; time will tell.

I'm no particular fan of Word, but unfortunately I work in an industry where it's the standard.

Bert Coules