A Quick Look at Open Office |
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I received an e-mail recently from a CensusTools user asking me if I had seen and tested the Open Office productivity suite. The short answer was "no". The long answer deserves some discussion because Open Office is a free alternative to MS Excel and the rest of MS Office. I downloaded a copy of Open Office and loaded it up. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find a very polished product. The spreadsheet program is full featured and opens MS Excel documents. I gave it a workout using my 1790-1930 spreadsheet and found that with just minor exceptions, they are compatible. With my spreadsheet open I did a print preview and found that the margins didn't translate exactly. It doesn't matter on screen, but if a researcher wanted to print a completed worksheet, minor adjustments to the margins might be required to get everything to print on a single page. After entering some data, I attempted to save the file in MS Excel format. I got an error message that some data might end up missing. I did it anyway, reopened the file and did not lose any data. When saving in Open Office format, there was no error message. Open Office is available as a free download from OpenOffice.org. The download file is over 100MB so it's not suitable for a dialup connection. For modem users, Open Office has a page listing authorized sources of the program on CDROM for a nominal charge. |
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1. All CensusTools Worksheets Now Available in PDF Format! |