OpenOffice.org ® is a complete open-source office suite: a functional alternative to Microsoft Office that anyone can download at zero cost. You can use OOo to do word-processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, math equations, databases, and Websites. You can run it cross-platform on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and there are versions for dozens of languages besides English. See Wikipedia's OOo article for history of the suite, issues, and more references.
OOo can open, create, edit, and save documents in Microsoft Office file formats. You can easily edit the same document files using Office at work and OOo at home, on a USB flash drive or other portable media, if your organization is small enough for its security rules to permit that, or using secure remote access.
OOo also has its own default OpenDocument XML-based formats, also recognized as ISO 26300. There's a table in the OpenDocument section of my Using OOo page that compares the OOo modules and their native file formats with those of Microsoft Office. I consider it likely that Microsoft Office will eventually support the OpenDocument standard.
OOo 2.4 was released 27 Mar 2008 with improved text selection and find/replace in Writer, smart move and copy for blocks of cells and a text to columns feature in Calc, and more charting improvements. OOo 2.3 (Sep 2007) included a major rework of the charting system and support for fourteen new languages. OOo 2.2 (Mar 2007) added enhanced text display throughout, better support for pivot tables in the Calc spreadsheet, improvements in Base, and a more robust Mac version for X11. OOo 2.1 (Dec 2006) added multiple monitor support for the Impress presentation module, improved Calc HTML export, enhanced Access support in Base, more languages, and automatic updates notification.
OOo had its beginnings in the code base of an office suite called StarOffice, which was purchased in 1999 from European developers by Sun Microsystems, and then made available free of charge. In 2000 it was used as the starting point for the OpenOffice.org program for ongoing open-source development of a free office suite. Sun continues to heavily sponsor and contribute to OOo, and sells a somewhat augmented shrink-wrap version of the suite under the StarOffice name. In September 2007 it was announced that IBM has joined the OOo community. This includes contributions to the suite by IBM developers.
| Major release versions | |
|---|---|
| OOo 1.x (May 2002) |
Default formats: OOo-designed XML-based (SXW, SXC, SXI) Can handle documents in Microsoft Office formats (DOC, XLS, PPT) Can be used cross-platform on Windows, Linux, and Mac |
| OOo 2.x (Oct 2005) |
New default formats:
OpenDocument ISO 26300 XML-based (ODT, ODS, ODP) Still fully supports Microsoft Office and OOo 1.x formats Lots of new features, rough functional parity with Microsoft Office |
OpenOffice.org is not a clone of Microsoft Office. You can accomplish nearly all the same things in OOo 2.x, but the procedures will be different in detail. That's why they call it transition. You may even find you like OOo better, if you don't give up the first time something is different. For the Word-to-Writer transition there's a PDF table-format howto guide available that compares menu paths for 90 word-processing tasks. For OOo in general there's context-sensitive Help, two different series of PDF User Guides, and more howto guides and other docs.
In Microsoft Office 2007's new Fluent/Ribbon interface they have rearranged everything in the menus. Fun, huh? It may actually be easier for you to transition from whatever MS Office version you have now to OOo 2+ than to Office 2007. Not to mention the opportunity for individuals and organizations to switch from Microsoft prices and mutating licensing terms to open-source freeware. OOo 2.x is probably closest interface-wise to Office 2000.*
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