The French want to BAN .doc and .xls files from Le Gouvernement Microsoft could get the boot from the French government if a new recommendation from an official advisor is adopted. DISIC (Direction interministérielle des systèmes d'information et de communication de l'État) has recommended that French authorities ditch Microsoft Office tools in favour of the Open Document Format (ODF). …
Good for them. Either they liberate themselves from lock-in and licence roulette or they reap the rewards of a flurry of desperate "lobbying" - probably with XP & 2003 migration contributing very significantly to that... then repeat in a few years time. Can't lose.
Makes one wonder who's got whom over a barrel these days. Certainly nice to see the shoe on the other foot.
"has recommended that French authorities ditch Microsoft Office tools in favour of the Open Document Format"
The best option for using the most recent version of ODF at the moment IS Microsoft Office. Also the first question it asks you when you launch Office 2010 is do you want to use ODF or XML formats.
This will likely be as successful as the French campaign not to use English words (not very)....
ODF isn't well supported until Office 2013 though. Since SatNad's in charge now, I think MS will likely raise the white flag, but they need to help ODF fill in some feature gaps first, and then go ahead kill off OOXML. Truthfully, them maintaining their OOXML document standards just takes time away from development of the product itself. Nobody cares about ODF/OOXML at the end user level, but they do care about user interface and the application though, which is where MS is actually making their money.
The best option for using the most recent version of ODF at the moment IS Microsoft Office
Err, no. Their implementation sucks, illustrated by the sort of problems you get when seeking to integrate with Libre/OpenOffice users. That's logical, though, first of all there is the "Not Invented Here" issue (internally known as the "Not Profiting From This" issue), secondly there is the issue that until recently, all attention and resources were focused on ramming MS OOXML down everyone's throat (which also seriously sucks, but we'll leave that for another day).
The best option for using the most recent version of ODF is using a totally free package. So, most certainly not made by Microsoft and infinitely more profitable, also because you don't have any procurement process and license management overhead to deal with.
"Their implementation sucks, illustrated by the sort of problems you get when seeking to integrate with Libre/OpenOffice users"
The vast majority of those are problems with Open Office as per the numerous bug complaints in the forums. Microsoft have by far the best ODF implementation and by a long way the most capable Office products in Office 2013.
So they don't want to get rid of Microsoft products, they just want to eliminate proprietary file formats?
Which is fine since Office supports other formats, no?
However, I thought DOC/XLS had long since been cracked by everyone and their dog to the extent that support for DOC in mobile devices is far better than DOCX.
>However, I thought DOC/XLS had long since been cracked by everyone and their dog to the extent that support for DOC in mobile devices is far better than DOCX.
Considering even official MS Office releases cannot reliably display XLS/DOC files which were made with another version .. now, don't get me started on cross-platform compatibility ... Office for Mac is even worse in this respect.
Hove you ever opened the XML in a DOCX ? They cut sentences off randomly, formatting is all over the place ... worse than frontpage, and no, I did not think that possible, either.
Back when I was doing a bunch of documentation I had DOC compat probs with Word 2007 and 2010. To get many Word 2003 (and below) legacy docs to open in Word 2007+, I've had to open/save them in OpenOffice, (now LibreOffice) to fix the formatting in a way that Microsoft can read its own file...
Back when I was doing a bunch of documentation I had DOC compat probs with Word 2007 and 2010. To get many Word 2003 (and below) legacy docs to open in Word 2007+, I've had to open/save them in OpenOffice, (now LibreOffice) to fix the formatting in a way that Microsoft can read its own file...
Been there. It has to do with the (IMHO still totally insane) decision to include format codes with a cut & paste operation. I still have to see ANY wordprocessor which doesn't default to that option instead of only copying text - would have saved MASSIVE amounts of man hours globally (I have personally only ever come across maybe 2 occasions in 20 years worth of document writing where that inclusion made any sense). Especially larger documents tend to be assembled out of other pieces, and the MS cut&paste was very good at only copying partial format instructions along with the text, to the point that it eventually confused itself so much that docs would no longer load (typically this is when docs are nearly complete and deadlines are thus looming). This happened faster when the operator in question was never given even the most basic hint at using document styles instead of leaving format commands throughout the document for cut & paste to shred.
Your solution was indeed the only way out: load into OpenOffice, sometimes clean the whole thing out and start styling it again. Never failed.
"To get many Word 2003 (and below) legacy docs to open in Word 2007+, I've had to open/save them in OpenOffice"
This is standard procedure for document repair. LibreOffice can handle errors far better than MS Office can.
The only exception I've found to this was when a webserver was inserting 2 CRs before the downloaded binary (Shitty PHP code). MS Office burped but continued. Libre really didn't like it.
France has a history of genuinely favouring open source. By and large this has helped keep the French IT sector active and helped avoid some outsourcing.
Office 2016 will now ask you what format (OOXML / ODF) you want to use as standard. I spend a fair amount of time working my way through the OOXML specification and there are some maddening inconsistencies and errors in it. I can very much imagine many of the Microsoft developers jumping for joy they no longer have to work with it themselves. ODF is a far better specification though by no means perfect.
To their credit Microsoft has continued to publish the details of what are essentially proprietary extensions to OOXML and the extensions are generally a considerable improvement on the original, which looks like decompiled BIFF mixed in XML bullshit a lot of the time. Office 2013 will even let you save as "strict OOXML" with the disadvantage of this being the least interoperable version, largely because it uses different XML namespaces. The last time I checked it wasn't supported by LibreOffice or OpenOffice but that may have changed.
The big problem for LibreOffice and OpenOffice, and the opportunity for Microsoft, is that LO and OO are worse to use. I gave up on LO because it routinely crashed doing things like saving to PDF or loading a single page invoice with an embedded logo. OO is more stable and has the better UI but is getting little developer love. Microsoft has the money to pay developers and you can see this in the upcoming Office 2016 which has toned down the worst of the 2007 / 2010 distractions (I hate the ribbon) and particularly Excel has features which "power users", generally in the finance industry, are happy to pay for.
Microsoft has also, if somewhat belatedly, discovered the mobile market where OO and LO have yet to show. For things to really change then we're going to have work out ways of paying more developers to work on OO and LO (merging codebases at some point might be an idea).
Last but not least, I'll side with almost anyone agains the time-wasters at the FSF.
The big problem for LibreOffice and OpenOffice, and the opportunity for Microsoft, is that LO and OO are worse to use. I gave up on LO because it routinely crashed doing things like saving to PDF or loading a single page invoice with an embedded logo
I assume those docs were not created on LO or OO? I haven't had a crash with LO in, well, years really, but I use it on OSX. I settled on LO for use - I've used both but my preference is LO. I don't have much issue with the UI, but I admittedly do far less complex work than I used to do so maybe I just didn't notice - my main motivation to drop MS Office completely was that ^&%#$ ribbon, the worst interface ever to be inflicted on an end user..
"I assume those docs were not created on LO or OO? "
Correct. These were documentation files that had never seen OO/LO ever. I went out on a limb taking the actions I did, since at the time OO wasn't technically allowed for documentation work where I was... Afterwards the stance lightened up as other folks internally were running into the same problem and using the same solution. As of Office 2010, it still had a problem importing complex documentation from their own DOC format that LO didn't. Haven't been in a position with complex DOC's since 2013 came out to test it, but I'd hope the current MS Word has compatibility with MS Word DOC's by now. :)
Ribbon works fine for the average user, but I keep doing unexpected things and it never adjusts properly for what I'm trying to do that second. So for me, menu/toolbar interface is way faster. Although ribbon did encourage me to learn keyboard shortcuts to bypass it altogether where I could. That kind of efficiency translates well regardless of interface. :)
I recall the last UK government said all documents needed to be odf... I work for a supplier to DWP, and we get document in pretty much any format you can think of - doc, docx, xls, rtf, pdf, the list goes on.
Whilst I support the open formats (for future use / interoperability), I think the people who actually do the work won't pay any attention to this.
I don’t know what kind of supplier to the DWP you are but presumably a supplier to any government operation can’t deliver software or hardware that spits out files in a not-approved format.
That civil servants have their default file format set to a not-approved format is a smaller issue. That should be tackled by their IT department. It shouldn’t be too difficult to roll out a GPO to have all instance of MS Office default to output in OpenDocument.
Once you move to Libre or Open, you can't go back to Microsoft, because Microsoft no comprendo, on purpose, of course. I keep a dusty old version of Word, Excel etc to be able to deal with clients using this, but I use open source for the rest and my goodness it is a joy. It took a few days of getting used to it (many years ago) and now I find Word etc clunky and odd.
One of the reasons it's difficult to move to Libre or Open is because Libre and Open deliberatly choose incompatiblity with Office.
One of the reasons people were able to move to Office is because MS deliberatly choose compatiblilty with 123. Remember that whole "Embrace, extend and extinguish" meme? MS choose compatibility ("Embrace"), improvement ("extend") and superiority ("extinguish").
Open Office choose incompatiblity because of inferiority.
Er, kind of backwards there. Open/Libre Office focused on implementing the open formats. MS pulled their usual BS of saying they were going to support the open formats (embrace) and then modifying how those formats were implemented (extend) while keeping the modifications propriatory so that competitors wouldn't be *able* to support files created in Office, meaning anyone using office would struggle to migrate to another system and using Microsoft's market dominance to force others out (extinguish)
It would make life a hell of a lot easier if Microsoft actually implemented the open doc specification. Oh no, that means that people would buy MS Office purely on its technical merits rather than paying for the privilege to forgo the headache with interoperability in trying to open a crappy MS XML infused fuster cluck in Libre Office. And of course (for a lot the admin staff anyway), the wonderful possiblity to utilise the (in)famous Ribbon we clearly all love! Heaven forbid -_-
Microsoft implemented OpenDocument since MS Office 2007 SP2. That means that practically any office desktop in the world can read and write OpenDocument files now. MS had to because many governments started to require ODF support years ago and they we're not keen on losing those sales.
But I assume you mean why they had to invent their own format instead of using the existing OpenDocument. I think I know why but it's a shame indeed...
Microsoft implemented OpenDocument since MS Office 2007 SP2
Hmm, only if your definition of "implemented" includes "added with gaffer tape, some straws and precision fitted by means of a large hammer". ODF support in MS Office is about as integrated and functional as Donald Trump and Lady Macbeth in one room would be: eventful, but by no means productive.
Microsoft Office handles a previous version of ODF, either 1.0 or 1.1, I forget which.
It does not support ODF 1.2 recently ratified as an ISO standard (although in very long term use):
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/2015/07/17/open-document-format-odf-1-2-published-as-international-standard-263002015-by-isoiec/
"Microsoft Office handles a previous version of ODF, either 1.0 or 1.1, I forget which.
It does not support ODF 1.2 recently ratified as an ISO standard (although in very long term use):"
Nope, Office 2013+ fully supports ODF 1.2 in Excel, Word and Powerpoint, and Office 365 supported it since May 2015.
"Compliance love" barely even begins to cover it!
>"Hopefully ODF 1.2 becoming an ISO standard recently and more governments requiring it means MS will get their act together."
You really "don't get" how MS works, do you?..
Well, always has worked, anyway. ODF 1.2 becoming an ISO standard will be a really telling test of the true nature of the big Nads' glasnostoid schmoozing campaign. I'll certainly be watching the fine detail of MS's actions in response to ODF 1.2 very closely and suggest you do the same.
Let's hope the recommendation is adopted. Open formats should have been taken up by education and the public sector years ago. It would save taxpayers millions in MS license fees. Come to think of it, Cabinet Minister Francis Maude planned to standardise on open formats to "cut costs on Office suite and break oligopoly of IT suppliers". Anyone know what's happened to that plan?
That was implemented, exactly one year ago today. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/open-document-formats-selected-to-meet-user-needs
I don't know how far they are with changing the default save format on government desktops though. I think the most important thing is that IT suppliers to government departments can't sell services, hardware and software any more that requires or produces not-approved file formats.
I expect decisions like these by various governments not to create a revolution (we would have seen that by now as the first government required ODF many years ago) but rather a slow trickle. IT suppliers can't ignore ODF any more and I expect we'll slowly see more and more product support ODF. If anything, it's a massive shot in the arm for developers implementing ODF, creating its frameworks etc.
Jean-Marc Ayrault also suggested, in 2012, that the usage of Open Source Software was to be encouraged, great... but...... They believed that they could have made a reduction in costs of 5 - 10% .. ( When you are dealing with a budget of 3 Billion, 5% is definitely a worthwhile reduction).
As far as I know though very little headway was ever made, my wife is a civil servant and their default documents are still in .DOC, .XLS format.( Word and Excel being the standard software).. I am convinced that she would not know what an .ODF document was....
Autant pisser dans une violin.
.DOC and .XLS are two different beasts when it comes to transitioning to ODF.
.DOC sure..... why not?
.XLS.......... must wait until ODF has a spreadsheet that can do everything.
From personal experience, even the LibreOffice Calc forum experts will tell you: for that you need to use Excel.
I don't understand the thumbs down???
Anybody who has worked with both, will tell you that Excel is in a different league to ODF.
..... and what's more...... nobody working with calc would say otherwise.
..... and anybody who has spent time on the ODF forums will know this to be the case.
I'm certainly not an MS acolyte........ I wanted to use ODF for a spreadsheet (that I'd developed), for open distribution.
I couldn't use it, because it simply couldn't do what was required.
I was told this by the ODF bods.... yet I still tried..... until I accepted.
So...... thumbs down for relating genuine experience?
Perhaps we should just stick to joking around eh?
My own problem involved charts.
There were a number of issues, but one in particular was the ability to click on a chart, and move intersection lines into positions on the curves.
In excel this was a feature.
In calc I couldn't achieve it.
The lines were not specifically associated with the chart.
On calc forum MTP (volunteer 1334 posts) said:
"Excel has more advance chart features (Calc only copied the basic features that are commonly used)"
So there we are.
I was merely commenting on my own experience, and what Calc volunteers stated.
https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=76299&p=347362#p347362
This post has been deleted by its author
" but one in particular was the ability to click on a chart, and move intersection lines into positions on the curves."
"The lines were not specifically associated with the chart."
I don't understand what you mean by this. Surely a line not associated with a chart is just a line why would clicking on a chart enable you to move a independent line ?
Just playing around with this a line can be drawn on a chart that seems to be fixed to the chart if it's drawn during the definition of a chart from Insert-Object Chart.
If you define a data set and click the chart icon then an independent line can be drawn later that can be moved around.
@ Chemist, @SolidSquid
I Provided the link to the thread:
https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=76299&p=347362#p347362
I wasn't about to start explaining everything on this forum.
The simple fact is that there were two problems that could not be solved using Calc....... no solutions were forthcoming from the Calc support forum...... the explanation being that the required features were not coded into Calc.
It's there to read.
Clearly.... if you have the solutions, then great...... I'll accept the thumbs down, whilst eating humble pie.
.... but either way, I was primarily basing my initial comments, on the advice I received from the Calc forum.
Time to renew the supply/support contract with MS then?
hoping for an even bigger discount than last time?
How many times have we heard of a government of big corp saying 'we want rid of MS-Office'?
how many times has this actually happened
answers on a pin head in 24pt type please to the relevant Gov department.
Be careful not to confuse switching to OpenDocument with leaving MS Office.
For most governments going down the open formats path it’s not the software license cost which is the issue, it’s the closed file formats. Especially when thinking about being able to read government documents a few decades from now and not being locked in to one vendor it makes sense to ditch proprietary/closed formats.
Because MS doesn’t want to lose lucrative government business they have responded by adding ODF support to MS Office (although not always 100% compliant) because in more and more countries it’s a requirement in the tender. That is the way it should be. If someone feels MS Office is the best tool for their job, so be it. As long as it doesn’t hamper innovation and competition. I am fine with people using MS Office in combination with ODF if that is what they want.
@len: The Gendarmerie has actually already migrated most of their systems to Linux and open office, although they've kept a few machines with windows to maintain compatibility with external agencies. Apparently they've made fairly significant savings with the switch, and having a large government department with experience in transitioning things might reduce the risks enough that they'll try shifting more systems over
".. I am convinced that she would not know what an .ODF document was...."
If the document opens up, she probably wouldn't even notice. Most of the end users I've run across don't know what any of this is anymore. They don't seem as knowledgeable as the end users in the 1990's which would've questioned it. *sigh* My wife surely doesn't anymore, she just expects documents to open, but she would've noticed a difference in the 1990's.
Ah, OK, I'm with you. We're going to save money by using Open Source, then still pay millions per year for Microsoft Licenses for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Visio, Project, etc.
Good one, that'll save lots of money.
If you're going to deploy free tools, you're going to need to re-train staff. Trust me, I've been through that loop. If its not "MS Office" the noise from the business is horrendous. Even when you point out that "Cut" and "Paste" do the same thing, they still don't get it. The trouble with Common Sense is that its just not that common.
The primary motive is not money, using non-proprietary open formats guarantees you can still read these documents decades from now. That might not be very important for most people and organisations, for governments it often is. They have archival and transparency requirements that many other orgs don't have.
As a side effect it also frees them from vendor lock in. Even if they may not decide to drop MS software right away they can do so at any moment in the future when something better or cheaper is a serious option. Their own files will not hold them hostage to one supplier any more. This will also require MS to stay competitive on features and cost. It allows for actual competition (which is also why MS is fighting this tooth and nail). They lost the fight in the a couple of countries (including the UK) and it will be interesting to see if they lose it in the France too.
"using non-proprietary open formats guarantees you can still read these documents decades from now"
No it doesn't, An Open format no more "guarantees" anything will open these documents decades in the future than a proprietary one. There is as much risk of an open format being deprecated in a future release, and while there are Internet archives, if you want to guarantee reading a document at some point in the future YOU need to retain an archive of all the required tools and applications along with the documents.
Alternatively if in decades time you find you need to read an ancient document then at some point in history there will have been a published standard against which you can get someone to write you a program to read the documents. Assuming you've retained a copy of the open standard.
"No it doesn't, An Open format no more "guarantees" anything will open these documents decades in the future than a proprietary one. "
You've TECHNICALLY got a point. The best kind of point. ;) How 'bout it makes it more likely that the document can be read decades in the future as opposed to a proprietary format where the vendor went out of business years before, or the product was decommissioned after an acquisition, the dog ate the source code, or any number of things.
"The primary motive is not money, using non-proprietary open formats guarantees you can still read these documents decades from now."
It's also part of the drive for "open and transparent" government. There are free file viewers for MS document formats, but if citizens need to interact with documents or be able to edit/contribute, then they need to be in a format where said citizen doesn't have to spend serious money on MS Office first. Not everyone has a copy of MSOffice floating around.
Having said that, although I do have an official copy of MSOffice on my company laptop, I've yet to come across any company document or spreadsheet which won't open in LibreOffice apart from one .xslx spreadsheet created by HR on the latest whiz-bang version. They got enough complaints back that they were forced to re-save in to a previous, more comptaible .xls format :-)
"If you're going to deploy free tools, you're going to need to re-train staff. Trust me, I've been through that loop. If its not "MS Office" the noise from the business is horrendous."
To be fair, the same effect can be had by deploying a new version of MS Office too. :-)
The Gendarmerie did a full transition to Linux for their desktop environment in 2013, so the French government has plenty of documentation on the costs and benefits of retraining. They started the transitioning by mandating everyone use open formats, then switched to open source applications. If nothing else this'll make it easier for other departments to make the same transition in the long run
"The Gendarmerie did a full transition to Linux for their desktop environment in 2013"
I would imagine that their IT needs were extremely basic. Mostly filling in automated forms for instance. Open Source office software clearly doesnt cut it for any real business needs, or more companies would use it.
I look forward to the day when there is good, basic, consistent document portability between MS Word and LibreOffice/OpenOffice, however, that's only a start.
The real sticking point is in the macro world. Currently that's the major incompatibility issue and it's not been addressed yet. I've never even heard that a standard has been/is being developed yet. Solve that issue and world hunger won't be far behind..
Until/unless that happens, businesses that currently use (i.e. locked into) MS office products will continue to use them, forever.
"The real sticking point is in the macro world"
Why the FUCK do you want macros in a text document?
Other than "because it's a gee-whiz feature".
Having spent days cleaning out infected files (One site I dealt with had more than 1,000,000 on their server), as far as I'm concerned the only good macro is a removed one.
Macros?
I don't know where you're coming from but around here, I routinely encounter CVs laid out for US Letter paper (we use A4 here, like every other freaking country except the USA), with not only ad-hoc formatting changes but lines centred using spaces, and claiming intermediate Microsoft Office skills. I've also had someone actually ask me for a calculator so he (and it was a he) could add up the figures in a column in a spreadsheet he was working on.
I told him a slight fib, and said that OpenOffice Calc (as we were then using) had a "formula" feature that was absent from Excel. When I shew him how to use it, he was blown away.
I have tried options including LibreOffice and they are painful in addition to lacking so many features.
Open source just can't compete with this so it would take someone to produce a competing commercial product plus gambling that they will get a good market share.
For power users, maybe.
For me, the real pain is the stupid ribbon interface in MSO.
Most people use a tiny fraction of any office package's features.
I have yet to find anything missing in Libre, and I can't use MSO at home because I don't have any windows PCs there.
depends on what you're doing. 90-95% of the population don't use the features that are missing. The feature gap also continues to decline over time. With that said, Excel itself is still missing some finance related functions from Borland Quattro Pro, (which is still my favorite spreadsheet). :) For me, the current Libre still functions adequately for 99% of what I need, but when it doesn't, I'm still dusting off Quattro Pro to handle the rest because Excel is missing features too.
This post has been deleted by its author
The UK under GDS also mandate that documents must be in ODF format (format format?), but will interestingly accept the proprietary PDF format rather than the OpenXML format.
Also in my experience Microsoft are the only vendor to provide an even remotely useful SDK for document generation for any format (DOCX). The Libre Office and Open Office SDKs are woeful and require an instance of the office suite to be booted up in a headless mode which shouldn't be necessary to generate a file.
There are different open standards to use in UK government depending if it's for viewing or for editing documents. For the former both HTML or PDF/A ("opened" in 2005 and 2011) are good, for the latter ODF is good.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/viewing-government-documents
"the proprietary PDF format "
PDF was a proprietary format, controlled by Adobe, until it was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008,[4][5] at which time control of the specification passed to an ISO Committee of volunteer industry experts. In 2008, Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting royalty-free rights for all patents owned by Adobe that are necessary to make, use, sell, and distribute PDF compliant implementations
-- Wikipedia
"The French Government is embarking on a road less traveled"
Not particularly less travelled.
There's been an EU directive pushing for open document standards for nearly a decade. It's just taken this long to start mandating things because voluntary compliance didn't work.
Most every comment extolling the benefits for French, UK or several other European Governments for (some already) adopting Open Standards based ODT Document format, have a considerable amount of down votes, but there are no comments directly and/or logically and technically defending the Microsoft OOXML formats.
Many readers may not know that Microsoft was a very active participant in the early stages of ODT development, but "bailed out" at last minute when they realized that the project was very near to a successful completion, and quickly reverted to an ad-hoc, convoluted proprietary XML offering as an "open standard" (sic) and "better alternative" to ODF.
This reality should be enough to show the deceitfulness of Microsoft in attempting to destroy any truly innovative, Open and Internet Standards initiative.
Makes one wonder about the mentality of those loyally and slavishly supporting Microsoft shenanigans and crappy softare.
The issue of retraining always crops up, but it is my experience that the majority of users of Microsoft Office are not using it properly anyway. I've encountered countless documents formatted for US Letter paper (as opposed to A4, which is only use here and in just about every country in the world except the USA. I've seen headings created using ad hoc font face and size changes. I've seen attempts to align table columns and centre text using spaces. I have had to let an outrageous spelling mistake stand in a document that I had been given a few minutes to "tidy up a bit" because to correct it would have meant re-paginating the document and ruining the hand-generated table of contents, pushing me way past the optimistic estimated time to complete. I have watched people sit with calculators, adding up columns of figures in a spreadsheet and entering the result manually in the cell below.
And anyway, it's not as though the keyboard is laid out differently in LibreOffice, or the rules of grammar and mathematics are different. The underlying general principles are the same irrespective what software you are using. Once you know how to select some table cells and apply a formula to them, or select some text and apply a style to it (and why you should use actual styles, rather than just changing the font face or size or applying a decoration), you're already most of the way there.
There will be a tiny minority of people who are using some fancy feature which means they cannot simply save their work in one program, reopen it in another and have it all work. But these are isolated cases and not representative of the majority of use cases. In any case, the task is not insurmountable; it might need to be done a different way, is all. Identifying which users can be moved straight over to new software and who will require more time should be one of the sections of your feasibility study.
Another beauty of open document files is that they can be generated easily by your own custom in-house applications. It impresses a tie-wearer no end to see a spreadsheet in his inbox every week with the previous week's sales figures, all present and correct -- and meanwhile, I've got the time he thinks it took me compiling it all by hand, back for myself .....
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
