wordpad, notepad, open office or what?

[frenchman96]

Hi Guys

1. I have been using Open Office for a while but am I right in thinking, if the recipient does not have OO, he will not be able to open the file I send?
2. any opinions on WP or NP
3. I use Sheets and Docs on my Chrome program and as I have a laptop and a Chromebook, it is useful I can open the same files on both but again if I sent a file to a friend, can they open it if they don’t use Chrome.
4. last but not least, what is the best doc and sheet program to use so anyone can open what is sent, am tempted to pay for Word ???

[Bruce]

love them or hate them, if you want to guarantee that whoever you send your files to, will be able to open them hassle free, you have to use MS Office.

eons ago, I was a WordPerfect fanboy, but had to transition over to Word simply for global compatibility.

and to be honest, now MS has a subscription method, you can get the Office suite for $10’ish/month (cheaper if you pay per year).
and it also allows you to install it on 5 PC’s and gives you OneDrive storage. (y)

[frenchman96]

I will think about that, so you are saying, even if the recipient does not have the prog, he can still open the file. What do you think of Google docs/Sheets?

[Bruce]

I’ve never used google docs or sheets.
never needed to as I have always had MS Office.

but to answer your original question, yes, Word can open OO docs.

[frenchman96]

Does this sound Kosher to you >>> Microsoft Office 2021 Home and Student Windows

[Rustys]

Why not have Open Office save the to the program format that the other user is using?

Have used both Open Office and Libera Office and had no issues doing this.

The link you provided would not touch if my life depended on it.

[frenchman96]

Appreciate your thoughts, I will take your advice

[Rustys]

This may help.

https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOoAuthors_User_Manual/Getting_Started/Saving_a_document

[Bruce]

while each software can open each others documents, you will find differences in formatting, fonts, justification and so on when you do so.
all depends on how ‘sexy’ your docs are, like Table of Contents, watermarks, headers/footers and all that.
but the text will come across, may just need some massaging to get it all looking nice!

[Bruce]

@frenchman96 - any news?

[Rustys]

Closed Abandomed