Another free for personal use Microsoft Office compatible product

[fox]

The product is WPS Office. I knew about it for awhile, but chose not to use it because it doesn't open documents saved in open document format, which is the default for LibreOffice. However, I decided to try it again, just to see if it had a particular feature that neither LibreOffice, SoftMaker Office or any Linux office suite seems to have, which is tracking changes in balloons on the margin of the word processing text. To my surprise, this one has it! It means I can hypothetically use WPS Writer to work collaboratively with colleagues on MS Word documents. I say hypothetically because I'm not sure that all of its features translate 100% to MS Word. It's presentation software is less useful, as it seems to lack certain symbol fonts in my presentation files made with MS PowerPoint. At any rate, if you want to check it out here is the link.

[ssfc72]

Thanks for the info Mike.
So does the WPS now have the ability to open docs saved in open document format (LibreOffice)?

[fox]

...
So does the WPS now have the ability to open docs saved in open document format (LibreOffice)?

No, it does not. In that way, the other Linux office programs are better. If you save a LibreOffice document in an MS format, then WPS can open it.

[Jason]

Thanks for letting us know, Fox. It's odd to me that it can't open it since it's an entirely open format. Although, I don't think Microsoft Word supports it either without an add-on.

ODF (Open Document Format) is actually a group of standard file formats (e.g. ODT - Open Document Text for word processing). I think they were originally created for OpenOffice but they seem to be maintained by a separate organization now. I didn't know this until I looked into it just now.
Nor did I know that Microsoft has actually contributed to the standard! If only they would make it the standard for saving their documents, people wouldn't be held hostage to the MS Office formats. And compatibility would be perfect. And if only we were rich. None of that is likely to happen.

More here:

https://opendocumentformat.org/aboutODF/

[fox]

The product is WPS Office. I knew about it for awhile, but chose not to use it because it doesn't open documents saved in open document format, which is the default for LibreOffice. However, I decided to try it again, just to see if it had a particular feature that neither LibreOffice, SoftMaker Office or any Linux office suite seems to have, which is tracking changes in balloons on the margin of the word processing text. To my surprise, this one has it! ....

To my surprise, I just discovered that LibreOffice does have a form of this feature. Go to the bottom of the document window and click on "record track changes". (It's the second icon from the left.) Next click on "show track changes" (first icon on the left). When it is on, click on the arrow on the right side of this icon, and select "deletions in margin". If you now change some text, the old text you deleted will show up in the left margin. It isn't as elegant as the Microsoft Word solution, where the deletions are shown in a balloon in the right margin, along with comments, but it does the important thing, which are to show the deleted text outside of the written paragraph, show the inserted text in its proper place, and with the deleted text outside the paragraph, you see the proper placement of all text on the page as it would appear if the change is accepted. Big deal for me!

[Jason]

I thought it was odd that it wouldn't have had that feature. Thanks for letting us know how to access and use it. There are areas where I can definitely use it. What happens if you try to export it into Office. Is the record still there?

[buster]

Or what if you simply change it to the Microsoft format, does it retain the same left right stuff, change it to look like Microsoft, or simply throw it away? Jason asked the most important question. If you send it to someone else, what will they get opening it in Microsoft Office?  And if they send it back, do you get a half and half thing, with both programs having an influence.?

[fox]

I'm glad you asked that, Buster. The answer is that it partly works across applications. Any changes made in MS Word (I'm using 2010) seem to show up in LibreOffice. But if you make a big change, only a small part of shows in the margin with a "..." following. In other words it won't list the whole change unless you put it back in the text. But also, it seems that sometimes if I make a change in LibreOffice, MS Office shows the change but doesn't always track it.

Conclusion: If I want to check an MS Office document with tracked changes in LibreOffice, I can, and I can look at it how it is going to appear with the changes shown in the text (and the deletions and comments in the margins). However, working on the document in Track Change mode in LibreOffice, I can't count on all of the tracking being recorded when I view the document in MS Office. Bottom line is that when I am working on a collaborative document with a colleague using MS Word, I'm going to stick to using Word to edit that document. But I can stick to Linux to do that, as I have MS Office 2010 set up to run natively using CrossOver Linux.

[ssfc72]

Hi Fox. It just occurred to me, would using Google's Cloud, Docs For Work, from your Linux Distro, be able to handle changes made to a MS Word doc?

The following was on the Google Docs web page.

Bring collaboration and intelligence to other file types
Easily edit Microsoft Word files online without converting them, and layer on Docsââ,¬â,,¢ enhanced collaborative and assistive features like action items and Smart Compose. You can also import PDFs, making them instantly editable.

[fox]

All of the local and cloud-based apps make the same claim. For the most part, these apps do a good job of rendering MS Word files correctly, and making modifications in them show up well in Word. But they aren't 100% compatible, and small things like the Track Changes make it better to just use the MS app.