Hello.
What is the best Office suit? LibreOffice, Open Office or King soft?
I want to save ".doc" file and send it to a Microsoft user.

Any idea?

Tnx.

I know that Libreoffice and Openoffice let you save files in .doc or .docx format. As for which is the best... I have no idea. I use and like Libreoffice but that's just my taste. YMMV.
jdk

1 members found this post helpful.

I prefer Libreoffice to OO. Both applications can save simple files to MS *.doc formats quite nicely.

Note that, if you have an OO/LO file with very complex formatting (lots of frames, columns, embedded lists, and the like), you may lose or scramble some of that formatting when you save to an MS format. When I have such a file, such as my condo association's newsletter, I usually export it to *.PDF (the capability is built in LO/OO) and send it to them in that format.

If you must create complex files in native Word formats for business purposes, use Windows or take a look at Crossover Linux.

3 members found this post helpful.

Oh .
So OO and LO can't support complex documents?

No, they just have problems saving it to microsoft formats.
they both use their own format.
btw, doesn't ms office support .odt (that's OO's and LO's format)?

WPS office (used to be Kingsoft) has very good support for Microsoft formats, as does Softmaker FreeOffice. Both many many times better than OO/LO at interoperating with Microsoft formats.

WHY!!!!

.doc is the OLD MS office 2005 and earlier format

it is a VERY VERY OLD !!!! microsoft format
as in win 98 and xp

the modern format is *.docx

and the current Libreoffice or OpenOffice will do just fine

BUT!!!!!
you need to KNOW just WHAT version of MS office they are using

MS office 2010 will NOT open a MS office 2012 document

If you don't mind storing your files under the cloudy Microsoft sky, another option might be Office365 (browser based on the linux end).

As ondoho said, it's just when you "Save As" MS formats that you risk losing formatting. Frames (text boxes) may not maintain their locations and may overlap each other, columns can go squirrelly, lists containing embedded lists may lose may have their bullets and their indentations changed, and so on.

I've created some quite complex documents in OO/LO. As long as you save them in OO/LO native formats, you will have no issues. They will export quite nicely to *.pdf from the native LO/OO formats also.

There is no guarantee for any software: as John said, even different versions of the same program may not be fully compatible. But transfer usually works well. The secret is not to make the layout too fancy. If you have tabulated material, you need fonts with the same metrics: i.e. the same text in the same size will have the same width. That means installing Microsoft fonts, or using the Liberation fonts, which are compatible with Times New Roman and Arial. You can never guarantee that the number of lines on the page will be constant, as both Linux and Windows word processors ignore the built-in instructions for line spacing! I use Open Office myself. I suspect it may be the best as it probably has more Windows users than Linux users, but that's pure guesswork.

Sorry for bumping this thread.
I second the recommendation for WPS Office. I bounce back and forth between Linux and Windows on different computers a lot and I keep my documents on a network share so I can access them from which ever computer I have booted at the time. When I used Libre Office to modify some excel files that I had created in excel 2007, it mangled the formulas. I knew about WPS (Kingsoft) Office and had used it on windows as an MS office alternative. I ran across WPS Office for Linux and decided to try it, and I can say that so far I have had no problems with it. It is designed to be a MS Office clone so compatibility is high on their priority list. It is still in alpha so I am sure if you dig far enough you will find problems but so far I have had no problems in fact it has a few nice features that make it better than MS Office IMHO. It does not support open document formats and it is not open source so if these are important, then it is not for you.