Anybody use Cross Over office (http://www.codeweavers.com)
This is usually a very solid method for getting some Windows programs to run on Linux without having to get Vmware etc.

It's essentially a decent stable pre-configured version of WINE with some fixes etc.

However I couldn't install Office XP (I want Word For Windows, Excel and Powerpoint) whereas it worked prefectly on previous releases.

OK I know open office is quite good --but sometimes Ms Office just does the job and this method saves re-booting back into Windows.

I've submitted the bug back to codeweavers but wonder if anybody else has either had or (prefereably) fixed the problem.

Cheers

-K

HI, could you tell what problems are u getting when installing ?

HInt: OpenOffice 2.0RC1 is MUCH BETTER than M$ Office!!!

Are you running the standard or professional version of crossover? Also what version number of CXOffice is it?

Yahh I also don't understan why anybody would go to all this trouble, when OpenOffice 2.oRC1 is much better than that of Microsoft, or at least the same, but I think much better, so why anybody would purchase codeweaver just for MS office that is something I can not understand? I use CXOFFICE only for internet explorer, as some sites mainly in China can only be browsed with I.E. , but Mozilla is also much better and faster than I.E. only some sites have JAVA problems and then you can not browse in Mozilla.

CrossOver 4.2 runs Office XP fine. Are you trying the new 5.0? I wasn't aware it was released yet.

I don't understand why people try to pump up OpenOffice when someone has a question regarding MS Office. I'd like to see OpenOffice do well, and I've tried it for a year, but everytime I needed something mission critical, I went back to MS Office. I absolutely hate Microsoft, but MS Office is a better product. I could list many reasons, but I'll save that for another rant.

In any case, even if MS Office was a technically weaker product, many people still have to use it for various lock-in reasons. I support open source, but when it comes to doing my real work, I'm not willing to sacrifice my career by using an inferior product.

Can you then please tell up what you can do in MS office you can not do in OpenOffice 2.0 rc1 ? I'm just confused here.

MS Word has a proprietary .doc format that I really hate. OpenOffice does support .doc to a certain extent, but has formatting issues. As of 1.1.4, I tried saving one of my documents as a native OpenOffice Writer (.swx) and I still had formatting issues (on a simple document like my CV). It would keep lose the formatting everytime I closed and saved it (something like adding extra bullets to an empty line, which I tried repeatedly to remove).

I also tried wrote some citations in a paper with references at the end of each page. OpenOffice totally messed up the formatting, with references spanning multiple pages.

Office has certain plugins. In one of my classes, I need an Excel add-in written by a previous student. Calc is not an option.

I tried using Impress over PowerPoint for a presentation that I had to make. Impress lacked some copy-and-paste features, although I can't remember exactly what (this was one of the later betas for 2.0, I believe). In addition, it skewed the images that I had originally been sent, and some of the images remained skewed after saving. This is utterly unacceptable.

Now, OpenOffice can do many things that MS Office can't do, and does many things better than what MS Office can do. And I really like it better for ideological reasons. But when it comes to trusting your most important work to an office suite, my choice right now is unfortunately Microsoft Office.

In a working office environment sometimes one has to use MS Office type documents and share them with other Windows Users --Open Office while good still isn't 100% compatable with MS Office.

For example EXCEL doing WEB queries is easy (Data===> import external data===>new web query).

Enter a web address for example Yahoo FTSE 100 stock exchange prices.

A little IE explorer screen will come up with any embedded table with little yellow arrows on it.

Select any of these and then click import -- Excel will request the row/column where to start the import and then import the data

Brilliant --easy and VERY useful. Open Office doesn't have this yet.

Similarly Power Point for making presentations has some features that Open Office doesn't (yet).

Cross Over Office is an excellent product for what it's intended to do -- it's not meant to run full blown Windows (VMWARE will do that) but it's an excellent tool to ease the migration from Windows to Linux.

BTW I found the answer to the original problem -- The CD was just dirty --I think a grease spot was giving an I/O error. I cleaned the CD with some water and then it installed fine.



Cheers

-K

I am having just a gosh awful time.

I have 12 years of MS generated mail, web pages, documents, presentations, etc. I do NOT like what I am reading about MS/Vista, and I flatly refuse to upgrade, yet again, to some proprietary software package. At one time, DECADES ago, I did some UNIX programming, and decided to bite the bullet and invest in SUSE Linux 10.0.

If I had no archives or huge body of work that I need to pull from on a routine basis, this OS, of itself, would be okay. I've said the same thing about MAC OS-X.

But I do, and I just cannot find an easy way to import from where I am (Windows XP) to SUSE 10.0.

Nothing I've tried that I've read on these boards seems to work.

I need to import from Office 2003 to ANYTHING on Linux. I really do not want to go the VMWare route, because that still leaves me tied to Microsoft.

What can you folks recommend?

Thanks,
Rade

In any situtation like yours you are in a "HERE ===>THERE" scenario so until you've converted everything you are going to need BOTH products. For running M$ office you have 3 1/2 choices -- Dual boot into Windows, Run Vmware (or parallels), Cross over office or the 1/2 choice run Open Office on Windows (Free and downloadable) to convert your M$ office documents.

You will need certainly to manually convert some documents depending on the formatting required.

The Open Office equivalent of Powerpoint probably works 99.9% as per M$ Powerpoint.

My preference would be for Vmware / Parallels. Parallels is a LOT cheaper than vmware and for home type users (i.e non corporate mission critical stuff) is probably your better bet look at this link for more info.
http://www.parallels.com

Parallels also works on an Intel Mac so you can get the best of ALL worlds running Linux, OSX and Windows on your powerbook.

The reason you'll need to run a "VM" is that often in translating the document from one format to another you'll need to save it on one system and then open it on the other --dual booting would be a real pain in this scenario.

Your major hassle will be with EXCEL Spreadsheets where you've got a lot of macros and / or web queries.

Until Open Office supports VB (Visual Basic) and web queries properly you won't get an Excel spreadsheet to work properly if it contains macros. Open Office is a great product but IMO not quite ready for "Prime time" yet.

As for MS Access MySQL will do a MUCH MUCH better job and project type software emulating Microsoft Project is already available. So Apart from Excel macros and some eseoteric Word formatting you should be able to use Open Office for most of your documents.

If you don't do a lot of EXCEL then Cross Over Office would probably be suitable.

Incidentally there is another route you could try. Install the Windows version of Open Office (there IS one) and then convert on Windows as many documents as you can --manually where appropriate.

Once you've done this fire up Linux and open your "converted" folders to check that the documents are readable.

I'll still bet however that M$ EXCEL will be the most difficult stuff to convert properly assuming you have some fairly complex spreadsheets.

BTW if you use SLED 10 you'll get the latest specifically SUSE / Novell tailored version of Open Office and also any updates as and when they are released.

Cheers

-K

K,

I found Open Office 2.0 for Windows and downloaded it. It looks a lot like MS Office, and I think I can work with it for the application files (Word, Excel, PPT, etc...).

Question: What about mail? I've tried exporting mail and the MS Mail folders? On Outlook, the options are limited; Comma separated, Tab separated, Excel, Access or create a new .pst file. Would anyone know if there is a .pst - to OpenOffice / kMail / etc... translater out there?

Thanks,
Rade