08-01-2011, 12:38 AM

I use open office for pretty much every thing related to money. It crashes sometimes, i can always recover my sheets though.
I was wondering how to look for an update, if it updates ever, and yeah.. thats it.
I DL'ed it from cnet.com i think. Def did not use the Mac App Store for this one.
There is a shot of 'about open office' attached here.

Thanks in advance

08-01-2011, 01:12 AM

Open Office was an Open Source application from Sun. Sun was purchased by Oracle and since Oracle took over has made Open Office a Pay application. The original creators of OO formed a new company and call the product LibreOffice. It's totally free. I would get LibreOffice and give it a try as it's what OO used to be and still free.

LibreOffice Productivity Suite Download » LibreOffice

08-01-2011, 10:41 AM

Originally Posted by dtravis7

Open Office was an Open Source application from Sun. Sun was purchased by Oracle and since Oracle took over has made Open Office a Pay application.

OOo is still free.

A lot of the buzz in the open source community seems to be behind LibreOffice so as dtravis7 suggested, you may want to consider migrating to it. That's besides the point though.

Does OOo not have an update option available in the menus (check the OpenOffice and help menu)?

08-01-2011, 11:01 AM

I read over and over that Oracle was charging for OO. I read that is why Libre was started.

Also I fired up the last OO I installed and saw no upgrade.

Did some more searching and found why there is confusion.

http://user.services.openoffice.org/...p?f=49&t=32655

Oracle is charging for Open Office which was Star Office. But OO.org is still there. I will support Libre myself though!

08-01-2011, 11:16 AM

Ah, it seems that Oracle has changed the name of StarOffice (which was a paid product) to "Oracle's Open Office" so I guess were both right in a way. Why they changed the name to "Oracle's Open Office" is beyond me.

So I downloaded OOo. During the setup, there was an option to setup automatic online updates. You can turn those on by going to OpenOffice.org > Preferences > OpenOffice.org > Online Update. You can also check for updates manually by going to Help > Check for Updates...

08-04-2011, 10:15 AM

why can't you just go to openoffice.org and check if their latest release fits the version you have? If it's not then download the upgrade? Or am I missing something here?

08-04-2011, 12:59 PM

If I remember correctly, downloading a new version of Open Office rather than an upgrade means removing the older version and installing the new one. A bit of a pain, IMO. It might be different now that Oracle is running things.

08-04-2011, 01:08 PM

Originally Posted by chscag

If I remember correctly, downloading a new version of Open Office rather than an upgrade means removing the older version and installing the new one. A bit of a pain, IMO. It might be different now that Oracle is running things.

That is true. That is always the way I updated OO at least on OSX anyway.

I doubt though that Oracle will improve things just from what I have seen so far, but who knows.

08-04-2011, 02:15 PM

Oracle doesn't have anywhere near the same commitment to open source software that Sun did (it's not even close in fact) and many of the high profile developers have left the project for LibreOffice. I wouldn't count on the same kinds of improvements that we've seen in the past.

08-04-2011, 03:07 PM

Originally Posted by vansmith

Oracle doesn't have anywhere near the same commitment to open source software that Sun did (it's not even close in fact) and many of the high profile developers have left the project for LibreOffice. I wouldn't count on the same kinds of improvements that we've seen in the past.

Agreed 1000% Van. I was going to bring up Libre again but seems when I do OO people get upset so I passed. Glad you did though! I will support LibreOffice and people who CARE about Open Source like Sun did. I am very committed to Open Source in fact. OO is gone from my macs.

08-05-2011, 12:52 AM

Thanks for all the help, I will see about Libre office, and if it will open the OO docs

08-05-2011, 01:42 AM

Originally Posted by Ttaylor394

Thanks for all the help, I will see about Libre office, and if it will open the OO docs

Libre is the same basic team that worked on OO so everything is basically the same.

08-05-2011, 08:16 AM

yeah LibreOffice will open up OO docs and .docs. It will also save .docs so that people on office can open them too. All the same basic stuff as OO

08-29-2011, 03:06 PM

THanks for all the input, this is a bump i guess.
I dl'ed LibreOffice and i still have a lot of force quitting.
Is there a way to convert open office documents or lebreoffice to open in Pages.
thanks

08-29-2011, 03:33 PM

I have OO.org, LibreOffice, NeoOffice, and Symphony (IBM’s version). Although Symphony does not have all the components (only Writer, Calc, and impress), it is a very good program. When I need to open .xls or .doc files, I use either NeoOffice or Symphony. More stable than the other two. But I keep them up-to-date as well.