In article ,
Emery Davis wrote:
On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 18:21:24 +0100, Jeff Layman wrote:

On 02/06/15 16:33, Bob Hobden wrote:

I put Ubuntu on an old Vista laptop and it works well but I'm not sure
I want to change over everything especially as the printer of the
newsletter I publish insists on MS Word being used.

Just download LibreOffice (it's free) and save any documents in *.doc or
*.docx format. For simple docs it'll work fine. For complex docs you
might well see some layout differences.

LibreOffice (or OpenOffice) is great and it's what I use. But it's true
that the layout differences between Word can be a deal killer for
professional publishing. My wife publishes a newsletter and these issues
basically ruled out LibreOffice although she did try it for a good long
time.

That is why such publishers demand a particular version of Microsoft
Word, run on a particular version of a particular operating system.
No, the same version of Microsoft Word is not enough - Apple and
Microsoft Windows often differ badly, and so do versions of Microsoft
Windows. And don't even THINK of using different versions of
Microsoft Word!

LibreOffice Impress (equivalent of Powerpoint) is even more problematic,
she was giving an important talk in Shanghai last month (with an Ubuntu
laptop) involving some fairly complicated graphics, and it crashed
several times during the presentation. Not ideal! None of that is a
Linux vs Windows operating system issue, of course.

That's not a problem - it's a feature - bug for bug compatibility.
When I have had a seriously problematic Microsoft file, I have often
tried it out on a real Microsoft system, and got EXACTLY the same
failure!


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.