Frank Cox wrote:
On Wed, 7 Nov 2007 17:19:32 -0000
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
My question is, can he buy Open Office and use it in his Apple and transfer my
Microsoft Access and Word etc without undue problems.
There is no need to buy anything. OpenOffice is Free Sofware. You (and
everyone else) can download it free of charge from http://www.openoffice.org
There are no strings attached and nobody will ever send you a bill.
You can export your Microsoft Access databases to CSV format and import that
into OpenOffice. Your Microsoft Word files should just work directly with
OpenOffice without having to make any changes at all.
For exporting the Microsoft Access files, I have actually just used a program
called mdbtools that allowed me to export a mdb database to a CSV file on this
Linux computer. So that can be done as well.
Sorry, I can not agree with this statement at all.
MS Access support under Base is still weak at best - export to CVS and
import ti Base is not a simple task, and not easily done with zero loss
of information. Not to mention that this completely misses the
importance of the queries ( some types of which are not supported
directly in Base at all ), forms and reports all of which are lost in
the transfer and need to be recreated from scratch.
If you database is an integral part of what you do, and what the new
person does - then a purchase of the MS Access package may be
appropriate for the time being.
A transfer of a business use from Access to Base does indeed carry a
cost in person hours required, and this can be a significant cost.
Adding to this that the new user is on a Mac and it gets even less
desirable as OpenOfficce.org under Mac ( we don't know which version
from the original post by the way ) can be even harder then say MS
Windows to MS Windows or Linux.
More information is needed before I would say - yes, make the switch.
If you would like to look at this in detail please feel free to go over
a little bit about how the database is used - mostly direct table vies,
used for a simple mailing list for instance vs heavy use of custom data
entry forms and executive reports. Then a more appropriate piece of
advice cold be offered.
Sincerely,
Drew Jensen
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
