[ILUG] Disappointment with OpenOffice

[Timothy Murphy]

I had to edit a rather large Excel file.
Following excellent (no pun intended) advice from ILUG,
I converted the file under Windows to CSV format,
and edited that under Linux.
This solved the problem completely.
When I transferred the file back to Windows
it came up perfectly in Excel,
though the formatting commands (centering columns, etc)
were lost, but they were easily re-installed.

However, I tried editing the .xls file in OpenOffice under Linux,
and was really quite disappointed with the result.
In fact I didn't trust the program, and so gave up using it.

For example, when I edited one line in the Excel file,
another line was also affected, at least in the display.
And the little text-window at the top
where one can make changes in cells
was displaced downwards, so I could only see the tops of letters.

Finally, when I tried to save the file 
I was told it could not be saved in Excel format,
but only in some special OpenOffice format.
This didn't really concern me, as I had decided by then
that I didn't trust the Excel output.

Sad ...


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland