Personally I prefer saving in Openoffice’s native format. However in Organisations that are shifting to the Open Source model due to the cost/hassles of licensed software, still have to deal with people inside/outside the office who hold on to the comfort of Microsoft Office. Although all the other party has to do is download Openoffice for free and install it -it seldom happens. So at the end of the day, when someone sends off an email attachment to a Microsoft Office user, there is a furore on account of them sending “incompatible” documents to others, and the blame falls squarely on Openoffice. Here are a few simple steps to force Openoffice to always save in Microsoft office format -at the expense of some of Openoffice’s delightful features.
Select Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP from the right drop down box
Similarly Select Spreadsheet on the Left Drop down box
…and select Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP from the right drop down box
Finally Select Presentation the Left Drop down box
and select Microsoft Power Point 97/2000/XP from the right drop down box
Lastly, clear the check box at “warn when not saving in ODF or default format”
The keen eyed would have noted the warning exclamation marked in the screenshot above… You get this after changing each default save setting. This is the tradeoff or compromise for saving in Microsoft format. OpenOffice has its own special candy which Microsoft Office does not recognise! The performance also should be marginally affected as Openoffice now has to convert each Microsoft document into ODF on the fly and convert it back during every save or autosave!
Note: The file format preferences are lost every time you upgrade Openoffice. You can either take down the procedure or bookmark this page. In case anything in the procedure changes due to changes in a new version of Openoffice, this page will be updated and always hold the latest version of this document.
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if i am using open office in word document in window vista, so how do i save a word document in MS word so that if i send this document to my friend by email he can easily open it?
Hi Shravan,
The procedure for Vista is the same as shown above as the options are set within Openoffice and so do not make a difference whether you use Windows XP or Vista.