Not the same in Go-Office / NeoOffice

I have just tried to replicate the purported "bug" in NeoOffice, a mac port of OpenOffice based on Novell's branch Go-office, and it behaves just like Excel, i.e. it only changes visible entries. However, to me as a programmer, it seems more logical to apply edits to all cells with the same criterion, or at least to have the option to do so. Most Linux distros such as Ubuntiu and OpenSuse, use this build. Also I have used OOo on three platforms alongside M$ Office at work and never experienced the compatibility problems some other so-called professionals have. OpenOffice opens almost anything. MS Office is fine-tuned to open MS Office documents + RTF, which Microsoft helped define. I spent the best part of 3 months writing a PHP library to export to RTF, so I know what I'm talking aboit. OpenDocument is simply a more logical format that facilitates conversion between diverse systems. Don't let this FUD lead you to believe you need to shell out £200 on MS Office Pro. You don't. Even the Student Edition (currently discounted to £50) is rip-off compared to the much more complete free alternative OpenOffice. What we probably need is an OpenOffice Light, along the lines of proprietary Mac-Only IWork, but with clean HTML export.

Open Office is VERY GOOD

"People seem to judge OpenOffice by its compatibility with MS Office" I a way yes...Our worksite went from MS Office 2003 to 2007 about a year ago. I gave The Ribbon and the buggy slow support of .doc and .xls for about 3-4 months before I really get fed up. Unfortunately the help desk didn't allow downgrades back to Office 2003, not did they allow Open Office on the WinXP machines. Fortunately where I work you can be issued the old recycled hardware installed with CentOS (GNU/Linux) for "research purposes" , well I submitted as I will run some heavies of FEA and Matlab, and got it with Open Office. Have been writing technical papers, a dissertation, and bulletins on this. Open Office is excellent in its own right, symbolic linking, macro programming, LaTex extensibility, Calc BASIC,...it goes on. What is funny is I have this paranoid habit of keeping older versions of the document as I had some BAD experiences with MS Office bombing out and corrupting large reports and spreadsheets, with OO this seems silly as it has been so robust. Kudos to Sun on this one.....

fix it themselves?

If it's such a huge pain, and there are so many users affected, why don't they get someone to fix it for them? That's what "open source" is all about, right? You don't have to go back to the controlling organization to fix something, you just go ahead and do it.

OpenOffice is hobbled by the fact it has to remain almost a clone of MSOffice or the mouth-breathing idiots who continue to support that anti-trust giant won't even consider it. Which is a pity.

@Timothy

"Instead of complaining, what has MS done right?"

"SQL Server" ...nope

"Windows Server 2003 R2 and 2008/2008 R2" ...NT4 was better

"Office 2007" ...interface change = retraining and lost productivity

"Power Shell" ...yawn

"Windows 7" ...they still have time to F it up.

".NET 3.5" ...too much overhead compared to vb6

"Silverlight 3.0 (wow, 64 bit support, who would have thunk??? Adobe - get a clue)" ...Silverwho?

"Exchange 2010" ...only at gunpoint

I think the point is, they haven't done anything right. Well, except marketing.

Time for a switch

Sorry for being obvious .. but cant we put in a switch in a menu somewhere and have both behaviors available , menu selected ? Sounds like a lot of fuss for a simple plumbing job.

Ric

Inconsistent?

Another bug (sorry feature) is that in OO (v3.0.1 Ubuntu) when using Ctrl-D (fill down) on autofiltered cells, instead of drag-fill, OO doesn't do anything whereas Excel happily fills the visible cells. This seems inconsistent to me. Whatever has been (rightly or wrongly) designed for drag-fill surely should apply to Ctrl-D as well?