This document is a result of my own experience, and is intended to help anyone migrating from Microsoft Office (generally referred to as "Office" in this document) to OpenOffice.org (commonly abbreviated to OOo). It is written from a day-to-day use point of view, and so does not cover issues such as hardware requirements, closed source versus open source, etc.

This document is unlikely to be complete, but as I find new differences, I shall update this document. A link to the latest version should always be available on my web site, at www.phillipsuk.org.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

Last update: 2 September 2004

I have tried to be objective in writing this document, but as I am an open-source advocate, a happy user of OpenOffice.org, and a disgruntled user of Microsoft Office, some bias may have crept in.

Similarities

Although all programs are different, all modern programs that uses menus, icons and buttons are generally similar, and this is true of Office and OOo. If you are familiar with Office, you should not have too much difficulty adapting to OOo. Generally speaking, the icons are similar, the menus are organised in a similar fashion, etc.

General Differences

Office is a suite of programs (Word, Excel, etc), whereas OOo is a single program with several modules. The modules in OOo are Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentations) Draw (vector graphics), and Math (formula editor).

Because OOo is a single program, the options for all the modules can be set in a single dialogue box. In addition, options that apply to all modules (eg create backups when saving) only need to be set once. Being a single program also means that a different type of document can be opened without starting a new program. Eg, if you are working on a spreadsheet, you can open a presentation from within the program. By contrast, in Office you would have to start PowerPoint, then open the presentation.

OOo saves its documents in a compressed format. This means that loading & saving documents can take a little longer, especially on slower machines, but it also makes the file sizes around 25-60% smaller. In this age of ever-increasing hard drive sizes, this may not seem important, but it can be useful if the files have to be sent via e-mail or put on a web or FTP server for download.

In Office, setting the page size, margins, etc is done from the Page setup... command in the File menu. In OOo, it is done from the Page... command in the Format menu.

By default, OOo displays the position of the text boundaries (ie the margins) with a light grey line. This can be altered or turned off in the OpenOffice.org->Appearance section of the Options dialogue box.

There are some slight differences in the dialogue boxes used by the two programs. These differences are only minor, but it is wise to read the text in the boxes carefully until you are familiar with them. For instance, on closing a document that has been changed, the following dialogue boxes are displayed in Word 2000 and OOo Writer:

OOo can open and save to Office formats, but its support for other formats is not as extensive as Office's. However, OOo can save to formats that Office cannot, such as PDF (for viewing in Acrobat Reader), DocBook and Flash (for embedding in web pages). OOo also supports the mobile device formats AportisDoc (Palm), Pocket Word & Pocket Excel.

Some OOo buttons (such as Writer's "New document" button, to the left) use long-clicks to allow the user to select from a range of options. Buttons that can be long-clicked have a green arrow in the top-right corner. A normal single-click will cause the default action to be performed (in this case, create a new Writer document), while a long-click will display a floating tool bar, or a list of actions that can be performed. In this case, a long-click displays a list of document types that can be created. Clicking on an item from the list will create a new document of that type.

There are differences in behaviour when resizing objects such as graphics. In Office, the aspect ratio will be retained if a corner handle is dragged to resize the object. In OOo, the aspect ratio will be retained if the shift button is pressed while dragging, regardless of which handle is dragged.

Office includes a large number of templates and clip-art. OOo includes some clip-art (in the Gallery), but very few templates. However, a web site has been set up at www.ooextras.org, which hosts a number of templates and sample files that have been contributed by users. New contributions are welcomed (see the site for instructions about where to send contributions)

Word Processor

OOo's word processor module is called Writer, and is generally similar to Word.

Writer has no equivalent to Word's Normal view, although some tweaking with settings may produce something similar.

Spreadsheets

OOo's spreadsheet module is called Calc, and is generally similar to Excel.

In Excel, pressing ALT-ENTER creates a new line in the cell, and pressing CTRL-ENTER enters the value without moving to a new cell. In OOo it's the other way around. Pressing ALT-ENTER enters the value without moving to a new cell, and pressing CTRL-ENTER creates a new line in the cell.

In Excel, arguments in fourmulae are seperated by commas (,). In Calc, they are seperated by semi-colons (;)

By default, Calc supports the use of regular expressions in formulae. This feature can lead to some very confusing errors if you don't know how to use regular expressions. However, this feature can be disabled by unticking the Enable regular expressions in formulas box in the Spreadsheet->Calculate section of the Options dialogue box.

In Excel, a sheet can be renamed by double-clicking on the sheet's tab. This does not work in Calc. In Calc, to rename a sheet, right-click on the tab and select Rename Sheet...

In Excel, pressing the Delete key will delete the contents of the cell. Calc's behaviour is similar, but not quite the same. Calc will display a dialogue box, allowing just certain parts to be deleted (eg, you may wish to delete the value, but not the formatting, or remove the formatting without deleting the value). Simply select the parts that you wish to delete, then click OK. There is a Help button on the dialogue box. Clicking this will open OOo's help, at the appropriate section. In order to delete the contents of the cell without seeing this dialogue box, use the Backspace key (the one with a left-pointing arrow, on a UK QWERTY keyboard it is situated to the top right of the keyboard)

Graphics

OOo includes a vector graphics module called Draw. Visio is the nearest equivalent in Office. After creating a graphic in Draw, make sure you save it in Draw's own format so that you can later edit it. If you need it in another format (bitmap, PNG, JPEG, etc), choose Export... from the File menu, and choose the appropriate format from the drop-down list.

Databases

There is no direct equivalent to Microsoft Access in OOo, but each of the modules can access external databases, and forms & reports can be created in Writer. A good explanation of how to create a simple contacts database, with a data entry form, can be found at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/garryknight/linux/oodbase.html

LinMagAu.org, a now-defunct Australian on-line Linux magazine, published an article comparing Access and OOo, with instructions on how to use OOo to get Access-like functionality. Although the original site is now down, a copy (without the screen shots) can be seen at http://www.marcozani.it/openaccess.htm

E-Mail & Collaboration

There is currently no equivalent to Microsoft Outlook in OOo. For Linux and Unix, Ximian Evolution provides similar functionality. The Groupware Project is working on a client that can work with any one of several servers.

HTML & Web Pages

OOo does not have a dedicated HTML editor like FrontPage, which is included in at least some versions of Office, but all modules can save documents as web pages in HTML format. In addition, Writer can export to XHTML and Impress & Draw can both export to Flash format.

Writer is the best option for writing web pages. Make sure Online Layout is selected in the View menu. This will make Writer display the document as it will appear in a web browser.

Macros

OOo can use macros in a similar way to Office, but the languages are different, which means that macros that work in Office will not work in OOo without some conversion work. In Office, all macros have to be written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), but OOo allows macros to be written in various languages, including StarBasic, Java and Python.

The Writer and Calc modules have a macro recorder, which will record keystrokes & mouse clicks, in a similar way to the macro recorder in Office. The other modules do not have a macro recorder, so macros for these must be written by hand.

Office and OOo handle macro security differently. The security settings in OOo can be set in the OpenOffice.org->Security section of the Options dialogue box. By default, documents from a defined set of "safe" directories will run macros with no prompting. Documents opened from any other directory will display a warning message such as the one below: