[K12OSN] Setting Open Office 2.0 to save as a Doc by default.

[Glenn Arnold]

Thanks Paul for some insight!  How often do you have issues with
formatting or do you?  Is there occasional format issue or you have not
had any issues.  My concern is that someone will create a complex
document in OpenOffice and it will not save the formatting right as word
document and cause a bunch of trouble tickets.  That is my biggest
concern.

Thanks
-Glenn

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul VanGundy [mailto:vangundypw at sau14.k12.nh.us] 
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2005 6:23 AM
To: Support list for opensource software in schools.
Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Setting Open Office 2.0 to save as a Doc by
default.

Glenn,

In our district we have OpenOffice 2.0 save as .doc automatically. We
really did this for two reasons.

1. When we introduced OpenOffice staff were unsure of it. We had
previously been using Office 2000 and 2003. If we were going to get
staff to use it and like it we need to make it as simple and easy to use
and compatible with what they already have at home. We are giving them
OOo2.0 to use at home but that is there choice if they chose to use it.
Other school districts in New Hampshire use the .doc format as does the
State of New Hampshire DOE so when we send documents we need to ensure
they are in the same format. Often times, users won't check what format
they are saving in and if it's not automatically set to .doc they will
send an .odt to the state and it will get sent back causing frustration.
It's just easier to have it automatically set for the user.

2. We tech people have other things we have to do then get
troubleshooting calls on OpenOffice.org 2.0 and how it won't save
in .doc and only saves in .odt (because they can't figure out how to).
We also don't have much time to train the users how to use it so we set
it up to automatically save documents in .doc, spreadsheets in .xls, and
presentations in .ppt. 

Hope this helps.

-Paul

-- 
Paul VanGundy
Information Technology Director
Epping High School
Epping Middle School
P: 603.679.5472
F: 603.679.2966
vangundypw at sau14.k12.nh.us


On Thu, 2005-12-08 at 00:33 -0500, Glenn Arnold wrote:
> I believe I have read in this list that several LTSP users have Open
> Office to save as Microsoft Word Doc.  I would like to know if your
> users loose formatting when saving the OO document as Microsoft Word
> file instead of OO sxw or OpenDoc file?  I realize that you usually
> loose a little formating, but do you loose enough that you need to
check
> every document that you save that way?  Open Office 2.0 definitely
> improves the Microsoft compatibility, but I am very concerned about
> loosing page formatting.  Personally I would prefer that the users
click
> file save as choose save as a Microsoft Word Doc, but my customer
would
> like me to set the default format to Word in OpenOffice to save some
> trouble on training issues which I disagree with.  I feel we should
> train the users how to save a document in Word format instead of
making
> the users lemmings and never learn how to use special features in
> software.  Especially since this is a school customer who use
> OpenOffice/StarOffice internally for the student computers and only
the
> students occasionally have to send a word document to a college.  I
> would like to know everybody's experiences with OpenOffice using
> Microsoft Word as the default file format.  I will use your response
to
> help me decide if I should work harder to convince the customer that
> this is not a good idea.  My personal opinion it is always better to
use
> the original program to create, edit, and save a document then saving
to
> a different format other than the original programs format.  
> 
> Thanks
> -Glenn 
> 
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