Recently I griped about the difficulty I've had in opening documents at my two different computers; I've got Microsoft Office on the desktop (my main work computer for now) but not on the laptop. Since I work at both computers I need them to be compatible, but right now I don't want to spend any more money on programs. I can open a Word document on my laptop but cannot copy anything from it or edit it. This presents a problem. I will most likely get Microsoft Office on my laptop at some point in the future, but that doesn't really help me right now.
This evening I ran across OpenOffice.org and saw that you can open, read, edit, and save Microsoft Word programs with the Writer portion of Open Office, which is completely free. (I actually was told about this program over two years ago and I downloaded it but did not install it on my desktop. I don't know why I didn't follow through with it.)
I immediately downloaded it on both computers and l think it is going to solve my problem for now. I set my laptop to open Word documents with Open Office Writer by default, and am saving Open Office documents in RTF format, which seems to work well between computers. I ran a test with the same document and IT WORKS! It opens in Word on the desktop and in Open Office on the laptop. I'm elated.
I also love that it is very user-friendly. Right away I saw how to set Verdana font as my default; I've yet to figure that out on Word and I've been using it for a year and a half. Granted, I'm not the brightest bulb in the box when it comes to stuff like that but I appreciate Open Office Writer for being so obvious with how to do things like that.
Thank you OpenOffice.org for already making my life easier!
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