Good Evening, I admit to being a starter having recently switched from XP. How do I deliver emails to the remaining XP users that that have attachments thay can read if they are using microsoft packages of various ages especially when they have less computer skills than even me. Should I load word through WINE and send an Word emulating document?

Welcome to LQ!!

OpenOffice and (I think) Abiword can save documents in MSWord format. But, even better, why not PDF?

The format compatibility--even with OOo--is not perfect, so it you need editable word documents, then installing MSOffice with WINE (or Crossover**) is the safest way to go.

**Commercial version of WINE (http://www.codeweavers.com/)

Do these attachments simply HAVE TO be Microsoft or what? I mean, do they have to be, say, formatted text documents, or do they have to be specifically MS-formatted text documents? What attachments are we talking about? If they're just text documents, converting them to HTML would probably be your best bet and make them universally portable. There are plenty non-proprietary formats to choose from, but prior to making a choice, one has to know what we're trying to achieve here. Text? RTF for editable documents, HTML for finalized ones. Graphics? PNG. Music? MP3. Movies? MPG or MP4. You see, you don't have to bind yourself inside M$ boundaries -- unless you want to. Windows is not MS Office and is capable of understanding a few formats besides MS Office.

Yes. In fact, in the File menu, you will also find options to Send Document as MS Word or PDF file, which will send it as e-mail instead of attachment. You will, however, need to have Evolution configured as an e-mail client. (that's OOo's default for that feature).

FWIW- I've had no complaints yet from my friends who use Windows and MS Office concerning documents created with OOo programs.

Hope this helps