Word 97 and Open Office

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thedarkman

I've just bought a new machine, well, a late model Pentium. I gather
it has never been used before; I had it custom built with 160G hard
drive capacity and 256Mb of memory. It came with Open Office which
I've used before and which I'm told mimics Word. However, when I
create documents they are always in a box, and when when create an
html file I get lines in it.

Does anyone know how to solve these compatability problems?

I was using Word 97 before and would like to obtain a copy of this. I
take it this is not in the public domain. If so does anyone know where
I can buy a copy and for how much? I don't like the later editions.

Thanks
 
thedarkman said:
I've just bought a new machine, well, a late model Pentium. I gather
it has never been used before; I had it custom built with 160G hard
drive capacity and 256Mb of memory. It came with Open Office which
I've used before and which I'm told mimics Word. However, when I
create documents they are always in a box,
Click to expand...

That's normal - that's how Open Office displays the print area or margins.
it doesn't print, and when you save as a Word-format doc, Word opens it
normally.
 
I'm surprised it even boots up with only 256MB memory!

To answer your question is difficult because you don't actually say what
application you are using to create your document. You imply that you are
using OpenOffice: so why are you asking this question in a Word newsgroup
where we support Word?

As for Word 97: it has been superseded by Word 2000, Word XP, Word 2003 and
currently Word 2007. It support lifecycle is now over and it suffers from
many security holes. If you really want to use Word 97, then try eBay to see
find anyone is still selling it.
 
I know you expressed a preference for Office 97; however, it does suffer
from some security vulnerabilities, as Terry mentioned. And it is next to
being Unicode dumb so there are occasional problems for users that use
documents created by different language versions. Also, it and Word 2007
are not file compatible unless Word 2007 files are saved in the earlier
format.Perhaps neither is an issue for you.

Office Home and Student Edition 2007 might not be out of the question. It
does have the new interface so loved and despised. It is frequently
available at a discounted price. You can sometimes find its predecessor,
Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003 even more heavily
discounted.

Having 256 MB will cause a leisurely response that many would find annoying.
Increasing to 512 at the earliest opportunity would provide relief.

I mention Abi Word in passing. Free http://www.abisource.com/

Good luck.

Tom
MSMVP 1998-2007
 
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