What is the difference between openoffice and microsoft

Microsoft doesn't offer anything comparable. What Microsoft does offer is a company that has a strong incentive to create applications that it can sell. This means its features, support, and interface need to be attractive enough for users to purchase year after year. Microsoft has built a vast pool of talented developers, a mature platform, and polished user interfaces.

Also, by virtue of being the largest software provider in this space, there are hundreds of Microsoft Office suite experts who can help troubleshoot issues and offer tips for power users. The mandates for open-source applications also tend to be fuzzy. Tech-savvy programmers are not always focused on the interface or user experience. Documentation can be spotty. However, because open-source code is available to all, OpenOffice and LibreOffice are not solely dependent on their current crop of developers and corporate sponsors.

Even if all those people supporting the project were to disappear, the code would still exist, and other people could pick up where they left off. Commercial products tend to keep their code secret, so if the company goes under, so does the software.

That said, it is unlikely Microsoft will be unable to support its Office suite in the foreseeable future. Office is the online software subscription version of Microsoft Office. It offers all of the tools available in the desktop version of Office and many more that are not available for download.

Users simply have an account that gives them online access to their Office apps and the files created on those apps. Qualified nonprofits and libraries can get Office for free or at discount , depending on which plan they choose.

It's no secret that Microsoft wants to move more people to its software as a service SaaS model, where upgrades and new features are automatic and customers are locked into an annual payment to use their product. Critics of Microsoft don't like the feeling of being "locked" into regular payments and worry that they will lose control of their data.

Of course, there are benefits to a Internet-based Office as well, namely the increased ability to share documents and access them on multiple devices. However you feel about Office , this article focuses on the desktop version of Office because it's a more apples-to-apples comparison with the open-source options.

As a result, many of the new features in the online version of Office will not be covered here. First, a little about the two open-source tools: OpenOffice and LibreOffice are very similar products. In fact, they were both built upon the same source code. When Sun Microsystems acquired OpenOffice, and was subsequently taken over by Oracle, the community split and LibreOffice was created in parallel. The OpenOffice project has since been handed over to the Apache Foundation.

For practical purposes, users won't see much of a difference between the two tools, although it's generally believed that LibreOffice is quicker to update and offer new features. Many past innovations in the Microsoft Office user interface were met with scorn and frustration — most notably the introduction of the "ribbon" toolbar in Office Office is similar in look and feel to the previous version, which means the ribbon is still there.

Hopefully you're used to it by now. There's a new gray theme that improves visibility for some users and more charts in Excel, but for the most part Microsoft has decided that its desktop offering is sticking to the basics.

However, a few new usability features stand out. If you've ever been working on a document and suddenly wanted to find more information, you can now get what you need without switching screens. You just select the text and choose Smart Lookup from the Home menu. Office also offers more targeted help. Its new Tell Me feature lets you type in a description of the feature you need and spits out links that will take you directly there.

Outlook also makes it just a little easier to send a document in an email by using its Recent Documents feature. OpenOffice and LibreOffice, on the other hand, lack the ribbon toolbar and instead offer a more traditional interface — which makes them intriguing options for Office 's steadfast supporters. Anyone who has used Word or Excel will feel comfortable using their open-source competitors, Write and Calc, while those familiar with newer versions of Office will find them somewhat retro.

This is not to say that the open-source applications aren't also improving usability. LibreOffice has worked to simplify its menus while providing finer controls for charts and images across all of its applications. OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and Microsoft Office will all work fine on most computers, but if your office machines are significantly older, slower, or less powerful than the average modern machine, you'll find OpenOffice and LibreOffice better suited than Office However, both open-source options need Java installed to take advantage of certain features, most notably Base.

MLA 8 S, Prabhat. Name required. Email required. Please note: comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. Written by : Prabhat S. In OOo these windows include:. Some windows in OpenOffice.

You can move, re-size or dock them to an edge. To undock a window, hold down the Control key and double-click on a vacant part of the docked window. It is possible to have two windows in the same area. For example, the Styles and Formatting window and the Navigator can be at the right edge with one above the other rather than side by side.

Docked windows can be resized by moving the border. When the mouse pointer changes to a double-ended arrow, click and drag the window to the desired size. This window shows the different objects in the current document and enables you to move quickly among them.

Details vary from one application to another. For example in Writer it shows the list of headings and has controls similar to Outline view in Word. The drop-down list at the bottom of the Navigator is for selecting which of the currently open documents has information displayed in the Navigator.

To change the category of styles displayed, use the buttons across the top of the window. The drop-down list at the bottom of the Styles and Formatting window determines which of the style types get displayed in the window. See Introduction to Styles and Working with Styles in the Writer Guide for more information about style types and how the other icons in the window work.

In order to keep the OOo download as small as possible, very little clip-art comes with OOo. Media in the Gallery is organized by themes. Themes are displayed down the left side of the Gallery window. A common use for this window is in setting up a template for a mail merge letter.

You can drag and drop fields from data sources in the Explorer to create fields in the current document. The Zoom button in OOo only zooms the view. It does not provide a pointer for you to select an area to zoom in on. The two path settings of interest at this stage are My Documents and Templates. My Documents only allows one location. It is not possible to have a separate folder for each of the applications. For templates it is possible to have more than one folder specified.

For more about defining default locations, see Setting Up OpenOffice. What is different is that you can initiate the creation of any OOo file type from any OOo application.

For example, you can start creating a spreadsheet while working in Writer. To make it easier to manage your templates, such as creating and deleting folders categories , and importing templates into the folders, use:. Each component of OOo has a unique default template.

To change the default template for a component:. This section discusses the OpenOffice. See Figure 6 for an examples of the Open dialog; the Save As dialog is similar. Prominent Clients. Robert Weir, Holly A. Available Devices. Company Size. Available Support. General Info. A free, open source, and market-leading office software package composed of a modern and fully equipped word processor, easy-to-learn spreadsheet application, outstanding presentation tool, powerful drawing and diagramming application, fully featured database management system, and interoperable equation editor.

Company Email. Contact No. Company's Address. Apache OpenOffice Comparisons. Compare with WordPerfect Office X8. Compare with Office Compare with Microsoft Word. Compare with Thinkfree. Compare with Polaris Office Compare with Google Docs. Compare with Microsoft Office Professional