Hello all
I recently downloaded a document which had a 'ms format'. Unfortunately I couldn't open it. Can anyone advise me how to make documents compatible over both Linux and Microsoft?
Also one other question. Does anybody know if pdf documents are also compatible? I have exported a doc to pdf in my Linux, and so far i haven't met any problem of compatibility in Windows.
I am not really asking those questions for the doc that i couldn't open. I am more interested to know because I am a project student of Computing and I don't to submit a document that could not be opened.

Thanks for your time

manolakis

Don't know what "ms format" means, but Open Office will open MS Office documents and vice versa. I use Open Office at home and MS Office at work with not problems.

Hi.

PDFs created on any operating system should be readable on any other.

As weibullguy says, OpenOffice can read and save Office documents with few or no issues, but if the document is relatively simple in terms of formatting, then you might want to consider saving as RTF - most Office type apps can read and write this format fine.

Dave

PDFs are pretty portable, although not so many people have tools to edit them, so sending one might not be suitable.

You should be to read document created with most version of Microsoft Office using OpenOffice. For very complex documents, you might not get 100% compatibility. Typically the pagination might go off, and embedded objects might not render properly, but for 95% of the time there are no major problems.

For other file formats, you need to provide a little more information - what application was used to create the document?

Docs with formulas and other scientific notations are messed up a bit.

The easiest way out is to run openoffice on both windows and Linux. Then there is not format change and you only have to remember one set of controls.

Wish it were so!

Ever look at/use data source fields? They are labelled differently in linux versions; i.e <displayname> in the windows version and <full_name> debian/ubuntu versions. Makees it difficult to create universal templates.

Furthermore, the linux versions are often 'broken'; i.e. data source example again, not all the menu options work as they do in windows when pressing 'F4' to display the data sources.

Simple formatting of documents from windows to linux DOSE cause changes in pagination, presumably because of differences in the fonts used.

Openoffice, ironically, is just another reason why I can't totally abandon windows in favor of linux for day-to-day use.

Oh, that reminds me of another difference! Data sources again! There are far fewer options of database sources under linux than the windows version.

Much of the above is blamed on the customizations done on OO by the respective linux distros, :-(

my penny's worth!!

I knew it was a mistake to move away from ASCII art.