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Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

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Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#61

Post by buster »

dfc wrote: post #57
buster wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much, except that .odt is a true open standard, that the "editor" is free and that the "editor" is available for every major platform. And practically does everything you need, as well. Now, do you think i would pay money for MS Office? Even if i would, i couldn't because it's Windows/Mac only anyway. I'd say, sending .odt/.docx around is the least preferable option but .docx additionally has far more downsides f…

"Far more downsides for me as well." Sadly most people in the world do not care about what is easier/cheaper for you (and me). The most widely distributed office program is MSOffice, not libreoffice. MS Office users would have to bear the costs of installing/learning a new office product.

Yes, i know that. It saddens me that so much money goes to some (in my eyes) inferior product (and makes my work harder ;) ).

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#62

Post by DanBC »

JohnnyFlash wrote: post #28

So the message is. Lets all switch to LibreOffice! Seems like nonsense to me. If you are running Windows, which most people are, you are almost certainly going to have Word / Wordpad etc. A far better solution to .doc attachments is to ask if your content really needs to be in an attachment. A lot of the time it simply doesn't. To be honest though this isn't really a problem is it? When Microsoft first brought out th…

MS Word is expensive. MS Office is even more expensive. Many people don't need all the features and would be fine with Abiword / Gnumeric or LibreOffice. (I'm interested in what features MS Office has that are not available in LibreOffice. Elsewhere in this thread someone mentions pivot tables. What else?)

Many organisations would do well to save money on MS Office installations and switch to LibreOffice. (Hopefully LibreOffice will get some designers to help with the interface, and writers to help with the documentation.)

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#63

Post by buster »

icecreamguy wrote: post #48
buster wrote: post #33

Actually, at work i try to send restructuredText + a neatly generated .pdf. Looks better, is easily editable. As one of the few Linux/LibreOffice users i HATE(HATEHATEHATEHATE) .doc and especially .docx. It's a nightmare to work with and collaborate on it between MS Word and LibreOffice Writer. Something always gets screwed up. Please, Office people in the world: Uninstall the nightmare that is called MS Office. Libr…

I have to vigorously disagree. I used OpenOffice exclusively my entire college career and am an avid LibreOffice user now, however you are simply incorrect when you state that LibreOffice comes even close to MS Office. If you're going to say that LibreOffice smacks MS Office then I'm going to posit that you have never used a pivot table in Calc, and that you do not work in a corporate environment. In addition, for th…

May i ask if you edited every of those files with Writer, saved them as .docx again and they had no format changes in Word? If so, i don't believe you. Happens far too often for me.

Also, all the excel sheets i have in my inbox contain just simple calculations. In my experience Excel is used by most corporate persons for simple things. Make a Todo List, add some numbers, structured text more or less..

And still, some things don't work out. The last powerpoint i got, had weird text formattings (making it unreadable) in LibreOffice. The last Excel i got contained 2 emails embedded (drag&drop windows stuff). Hooray.

As a consultant i am working all day with corporate people in very different areas, and i bet that most of them don't even know what advanced features can be used.

Also, in my opinion, Excel should only be used for the simple cases. If you want to do some deeper analytics on data, i don't believe it the right tool to do. But that's probably just me...

Btw.: http://help.libreoffice.org/Calc/Creating_Pivot_Tables

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#64

Post by [deleted] »

dfc wrote: post #40
buster wrote: post #33

Actually, at work i try to send restructuredText + a neatly generated .pdf. Looks better, is easily editable. As one of the few Linux/LibreOffice users i HATE(HATEHATEHATEHATE) .doc and especially .docx. It's a nightmare to work with and collaborate on it between MS Word and LibreOffice Writer. Something always gets screwed up. Please, Office people in the world: Uninstall the nightmare that is called MS Office. Libr…

What is the difference between sending a .doc or a .odt? I say this as someone who has not used office since staroffice released working binaries for redhat (3.0.3 I think).

[deleted]

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#66

Post by dkersten »

icecreamguy wrote: post #48
buster wrote: post #33

Actually, at work i try to send restructuredText + a neatly generated .pdf. Looks better, is easily editable. As one of the few Linux/LibreOffice users i HATE(HATEHATEHATEHATE) .doc and especially .docx. It's a nightmare to work with and collaborate on it between MS Word and LibreOffice Writer. Something always gets screwed up. Please, Office people in the world: Uninstall the nightmare that is called MS Office. Libr…

I have to vigorously disagree. I used OpenOffice exclusively my entire college career and am an avid LibreOffice user now, however you are simply incorrect when you state that LibreOffice comes even close to MS Office. If you're going to say that LibreOffice smacks MS Office then I'm going to posit that you have never used a pivot table in Calc, and that you do not work in a corporate environment. In addition, for th…

for the 10 years that I have used Open/LibreOffice, I have not once had a problem opening any of the hundreds of .doc and .docx files sent to me via email.

My clients currently love sending me change requests as .doc files which contain a table of fields describing the work they want done. For some reason LibreOffice only displays the first page if the table is split between more than one page. After a while of annoyance, I noticed I if I use "select all" it would select even the off page text (despite LibreOffice saying "page 1 of 1") and I can paste it (table and all) into a new document and everything works fine. I don't know why this problem occurs, but to me it is a minor annoyance when they send me .doc files (and was a major annoyance before I found the workaround).

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#67

Post by bitboxer »

zerostar07 wrote: post #37
bitboxer wrote: post #4

Or even better: just send the damn text WITHIN the actual email. You know, just how sane people do this :) .

The sort of documents that need to be reviewed are usually in a prepared-to-print format, plus the amount of garbage that would accumulate in an email after 10 reviewers would be horrendous.

Yes, those could go as attachment, but I would strongly advise a workflow system that keeps track of changes and other stuff. Email is very troublesome for that. One changes something, another one sends an old version and that change is lost...I am working in the print industrie for a decade now and have moved a few companies from email workflows to a decent workflow web based system. It is way better. Trust me :) .

But most of the stuff I get is normal text that could easily fit into the email itself. Some people sent 1-sentence doc attachements regularly :( .

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#68

Post by monsterix »

freehunter wrote: post #44
monsterix wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you're wrong. There is nothing more than just a container, a space and memory hog, that word processors and Adobe suites provide. I believe that HTML is far more powerful than currently tapped.

There is nothing more than just a container, a space and memory hog, that word processors and Adobe suites provide. Which is exactly what OP was complaining about. HTML documents need multiple files to work correctly. .DOC and .PDF provide this. There is no standard for HTML containters. I believe that HTML is far more powerful than currently tapped. Key term for this chapter is "than currently tapped". The problem i…

That's a tough bet, but not undo-able. Looking at capabilities extended by HTML5, and the containers that the browsers already are, I don't feel (though I could be wrong) that day is too far.

Yep, someone has to build a standard for HTML containers to contain documentary elements like Word/PDF have done so far.

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#69

Post by twodayslate »

jonknee wrote: post #59
twodayslate wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Docs is most often blocked by organizations.

Citation? Google Docs is often used at organizations (they even pay for it!). There's a reason why Microsoft is moving into the same territory with Office 365--businesses require collaboration and emailing docs around is incredibly bad at accomplishing that. Even more telling is MS stopped Office Live which didn't edit online in favor of Office 365 which does edit online. It's just a matter of time before it switches…

Federal Organizations

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#70

Post by jonknee »

twodayslate wrote: post #69
jonknee wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation? Google Docs is often used at organizations (they even pay for it!). There's a reason why Microsoft is moving into the same territory with Office 365--businesses require collaboration and emailing docs around is incredibly bad at accomplishing that. Even more telling is MS stopped Office Live which didn't edit online in favor of Office 365 which does edit online. It's just a matter of time before it switches…

Federal Organizations

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/government/trust.html

The GSA itself is a Google Apps customer. NOAA also made news this year by moving over its 25,000 users.

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