I keep seeing reviews in which people claim they can be compatible with m$ office formats using openoffice.org but I can't seem to get it to work properly. The layout always changes if I switch from one to the other. Not to mention that even with the same margins m$ puts a lot more text on one page which leads to trouble if I switch between them. Sometimes I just have to make things work so others can use it in m$ office. Is this a problem that everyone has and just isn't really fixable or is something wrong in my settings?

The more complex the layout, the harder time OOo will translate properly. I just export to pdf instead of worrying about doc stuff. That way, the format stays the same and people can't change it either!

But I need it so people can edit my stuff too Sadly it's not even hard layout. It's just plain typing with only makeup being alineas which I do with a return and fat titles. But still it gets messed up if I switch between the 2.

You can set up the margins in open office to always be the same, to whatever word's are set to. See here:

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewto...fault+template

This is about font but you can apply it to whatever you want or to mimic word etc... Just choose page style and edit the defaults and follow the directions on the link.

With heavy formatting open office will have a hard time like busbam said. I have been using it for two years and that is my only complaint. Hope that can help

So with light formatting it should work ok? Is that what everyone's experiencing cause in a light formatted text changing from word to OOo or vice versa always seems to screw up hard returns, tabs and spaces. With a slightly more formatted text OOo even managed to change the order in which some images were pasted. Also page order gets all changed when I switch as in that my text suddenly is a lot smaller in word while it has the same margins set in OOo. It's all kind of these small things in which I can't rely on any of them to work together properly.