[X-Newbies] Re: RE:.xls

[Rob Griffiths]

On Dec 15, 2005, at 11:20 PM, Charles Martin wrote:

> But I think you need to recognise that you're something of an  
> exception.

I'm not sure -- I think what I wrote would apply to anyone who works  
in an organization of any moderate size (say a couple hundred people  
or more). Anywhere big enough to have a planning department, a  
budgeting process, annual reports, etc. You'd be quite likely to find  
"complex" Excel documents being routed to non-advanced users for  
completion. My manager at a prior job didn't know the first thing  
about Excel, but he was required to use it to complete the quite- 
complex budget templates twice a year.

> (like bold, italic or some fancy font they have that I don't),  
> nothing changes in 95%+ of the worksheets I get -- and I've opened  
> many of them in Excel proper just to be sure of this. This is but  
> one of the many reasons to hate Microsoft.

Huh? That makes no sense. Don't hate Microsoft because people are  
using the tools for things where a simpler solution exists. That's  
more of a training issue than a Microsoft issue.

> You make an excellent point that COMPLEX Excel documents really  
> need Excel or something closer to it than, say, Appleworks in order  
> to be read as intended, but of course at that point I generally  
> insist on PDF anyway. :)

I would stay as far away from AppleWorks as possible, given that it  
doesn't even support tabbed workbooks, which I would hardly consider  
an advanced feature. It also supports the fewest formulas of the apps  
I tested back in the day. As I recall, I think the OpenOffice/ 
NeoOffice products had the best compatibility.

But even in basic documents, troubles can arise quickly. If your  
office uses Word to share and modify a given document, and you use  
comments and track changes to keep up with the modifications, I found  
that none of the clones handled both these features properly. (Things  
may have changed lately, as I've more-recently looked at Excel, not  
Word.)

> For basic word and excel files, however, AppleWorks/NeoOffice/ 
> OpenOffice/ThinkFree Office/icExcel/Mariner Calc et al are  
> perfectly usable and acceptable greater than 95% of the time.

95% is a very high percentage, and one that I don't think broad  
statistics would support. I think a statement like this would be more  
reasonable:

"For a majority of users, an Excel/Word clone will probably be  
sufficient to open, view, and make changes to most documents they  
receive. However, if those documents require 100% compatibility with  
Word and/or Excel, then there is presently nothing available other  
than Word and/or Excel."

I seriously hope Microsoft's latest "open standard" for Office  
documents changes this, as I think competition for Office is a good  
thing ... but I'm not holding my breath.

-rob.