Does anyone use Apache OpenOffice

I've used OpenOffice for years. It's much more compatible with MS Office than Pages.

 

I used OpenOffice for years, but since the trouble with it, I jumped to LibreOffice:
almost equal, but stable.
;JOOP!

 

About OO? I don't know, it's too much to keep track of all those products.
About LibO? 5.1.4 is fine; of course there are some minor things that could be improved,
e.g. URL's from a table disappear when clicked again without activating the window.
(You might visit bugzilla at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/ for detailed info)
But if that's all ... I sometimes have bad dreams from my years with MSOffice .....
And I must admit that LibO has limited MAC-oriented staff.
;JOOP!

 

I use LibreOffice (only occasionally) -- never had problems with it.

Pages -is- nice, but not quite "as compatible" with MS Office as is LibreOffice.

 

Why do you need LibreOffice or Windows Office at all?
Just use Pages or log into your iCloud account and use the free online version of Pages. When you send documents to clients / businesses they should be in a PDF format. Do not send .docs, .pages or .odt files to anyone, very unprofessional. If you must collaborate, use proper software; iCloud Pages allows for simple collaboration.

PS. If you must, LibreOffice is the better choice over OpenOffice. LibreOffice is almost exactly the same thing ( actually a fork off of OpenOffice ) but is updated more frequently.

 

Open Office and Libre Office are *nearly* identical, useful and free. As is NeoOffice but It is not free.
In my experience, Pages is a much better word processor than these, though not quite as good at handling the bewildering variety of Office documents out there.
It is wise to get all of these for Office documents will not "translate" equally well on any one of them.
Also, if you do go with M$ Office get both the 2011 and 2016 versions -- for the same reason.

 

People who use Pages are sometimes disappointed by the discovery that it can't save .docx

Professionals often prefer .docx to .pdf

Too limited.

@Revo Runner LibreOffice and NeoOffice are comparable to Apache's offering. For some use cases NeoOffice is clearly superior but of the three, I most often recommend LibreOffice.

 

As others have said, LibreOffice is the more "actively supported" version of Open Office.

Since LibreOffice is free, I recommend downloading it and trying it out to see how well it will work for you. I use iWork, MS Office, and LibreOffice depending upon the task. I've added an MS Office 2013 theme to LibreOffice so that it looks familiar.

As to which one(s) will be the best for you really depends upon what you'll be doing. If you need to exchange MS Office documents with others, then the only choice is MS Office. LibreOffice does a fine job with most MS Office documents, but if there is any funky formatting, LibreOffice will clobber it. It is even worse with Pages.

Each of these productivity suites have their own "workflow paradigm". In order to use any of them effectively, you need to invest the time in learning how the flow goes and adjust accordingly.

In order of preference, I prefer iWork '09 (which still works under El Cap OSX) because it has a lot more functionality than the newer version(though I use the newer version for document exchange between MBA/iMac/iPadPro), followed by LibreOffice (for the increased functionality over iWork without significantly more complex UI), and lastly MS Office.

 

You may be wrong. See attachment.

Why? To allow the client to change a date, amount, add a contract item before signing?

Just for completeness, what features do you use in collaboration that are not available in Pages.
I like that I can share a link and see in real time as we work together completing a project. It doesn't matter if the user has a Mac, Windows, Solaris, Ubuntu or even Chrome OS; we can all work together within the online document.
http://www.apple.com/iwork-for-icloud/

 

I found my copy of Pages able to export in that way, but recently a colleague came to me with a document on their Mac that the iWork application could not save in the required Microsoft format. The application was not Numbers, I'm almost certain that it was Pages. The symptom was familiar, I didn't bother to note the version of the application.

The professionals with whom I have worked over the past twenty-something years nearly always prefer, or require, a format that is easily editable; and in the vast majority of cases that's a Microsoft format.

I would not recommend iCloud Pages to colleagues who wish to collaborate because (amonst other things) I can't predict whether all collaborators will have, or be willing to use, an Apple ID.

Where I work, all members of staff have access (through SharePoint) to things such as Microsoft Word Web App.

 

IMO, both OpenOffice and LibreOffice are well worth the download. If you are not cramped for storage space install both. I recommend downloading the newest "Still" version of LO. They also publish slightly newer releases that haven't had as much testing.

At work, we moved to OO a while back when we upgraded the OS on several Macs and our old copies of MS Office no longer worked. We've not had many issues. I've installed LO on my workstation and, after some use, find that I prefer it over OO. We still run OO on one Mac as LO isn't supported on its older OS.

The only issue that I've found with either LO or OO is that they don't handle, or at least didn't last summer, some images that were highly distorted and manipulated directly in a very recent version of MS Office ((MS Office 2013??). LO and OO failed to display the image and even the MS Office Online version failed to render the image in any usable manner. I had to open the file in a copy of MS Office 2013 on a Windows machine to render the image properly.

 

Of course Apple Pages opens .docx files.

This is just silly and not relative to the OP.

My initial post was why try so hard to work around someone's system of deploying finished documents to the world and if not finished deploy them using collaborative software. This, in my mind, is much better then hacking some other piece of software to work for you. There are other ways.

I have not 'used' an office document in over eight years and I work in a share point, Windows world ( actually have a little over 10,000 Windows machines a button click away ).

Having said all of that, if you really must, then I'd recommend Libre Office and not spending your money on Office for Mac.

 

OP:

Post the file you "can't open" here, so others can try it.

The advice seems pretty consistent -- use either LibreOffice or OpenOffice...