Openoffice and Google Documents playing nice with formatting?

[lsquare]

For a while, I've been using Google Documents because Office Web Apps haven't been released yet. However, what pisses me off about Google Documents is that MS Office is not able to read its formatting or vice-versa. It's so annoying having to fix the formatting depending on where I'm working. If I'm at home, I'll use Office. When I'm on the go, I tend to use Google Documents. The formatting issue is really pissing me off. Does anyone here know if OpenOffice is able to read Google Documents perfectly and vice-versa? I can't afford to get a Office 2007 and soon 2010 license for each computer that I'll be using.

 

[lxskllr]

Open Office works pretty well with MS Office; I don't know about Google. It's free to try, so see what you think.

 

[lsquare]

Open Office works pretty well with MS Office; I don't know about Google. It's free to try, so see what you think.

You mean formatting wise?

Like I said in the op, I have been using Google Documents for quite some time. It's just that no software seems to read its documents perfectly. Google Word Documents look like a mess with Office. I'm not sure about Openoffice and that's why I created the thread.

 

[lxskllr]

Yea, Office formatting and OO works well, but I don't know about Google. The best thing is to install OO, and exchange docs back and forth with Google to see if it works well. It'll only take a bit of time.

 

[Nothinman]

All office suites are going to have slightly different formatting, it's just the way things are right now. If a real, open standard format ever becomes prevalent that will change, but for now the only way to be sure your doc will look proper when displaying on someone else's machine is to use a format like PDF.

For editing docs in different suites, it's just something you'll have to be cognizant of and deal with on a case-by-case basis.

 

[FoxFifth]

About a month ago Google Docs made a new version available. In order to use it you need to change Settings as described at http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=176442&hl=en
For me the major enhancement is that they finally support the use of Rulers for margins and tab stops. With that enhancement I am able to move documents back and forth between Google Docs and Open Office with far fewer formatting issues.

 

[lsquare]

All office suites are going to have slightly different formatting, it's just the way things are right now. If a real, open standard format ever becomes prevalent that will change, but for now the only way to be sure your doc will look proper when displaying on someone else's machine is to use a format like PDF.

For editing docs in different suites, it's just something you'll have to be cognizant of and deal with on a case-by-case basis.

I know and that's why I exchange my documents in PDF only. However, can you edit PDF files easily? I don't think it's as easy as editing Word Documents. I don't think PDF was designed like that, but more so for viewing purposes.