Common Word ProcessorsA comparison

MS WordOpen Office Writer

Wordpad

Dean SteichenMay, 2013

Word Processors Compared

• MS Word – usually part of MS Office Suite $$$• Open Office Writer – part of Open Office Suite– Free Versions OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice, Apache

OpenOffice and others

• Wordpad – Part of Windows since Win 95 or even earlier and has been improved in Win7

Common Uses

• Notes to friends and acquaintances• More formal letters• Documents with images like Holiday Letters• Posters• Reports with tables• Others

File Formats Supported

• MS Word 2007, 2010, ….– DOCX (default), DOC (Word ‘97-2003 versions)– RTF, PDF, ODT, XMS, TXT, XML, others

• OO – Writer (Apache Open Office Version)– ODF (default), DOCX, DOC, RTF, TXT, XML, others

• Wordpad (Win 7 version)– RTF (default), ODT, TXT, XML

Implications?

• Open Office Writer is a free alternative to MS Word for most users.

• Open Office Writer can create pdf versions of documents like Word 2007 and newer can.

• Open Office Writer is a more powerful and flexible alternative to Wordpad.

• Wordpad is less complex and can do most things users want to do.

A Simple Note - Word

A Simple Note - Writer

A Simple Note - Wordpad

A Letter - Word

A Letter - Writer

A Letter – Libre Writer

A Letter - Wordpad

Documents with Images - Word

Documents with Images - Writer

Documents with Images - Wordpad

Posters - Word

Posters - Writer

Posters – Wordpad

Reports - Word

Reports - Writer

Reports - Wordpad

Open Office is not just Word Processing

• Open Office provides the ability to:– Read and Write MS Word documents– Read and Write Excel Spreadsheets– Read and Write PowerPoint presentations

MS Office Suite = Open Office Suite

• MS Office = Open Office• Word = Writer• Excel = Calc• PowerPoint = Impress• Access = Base

Questions

Demos?

• MS Word• OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer• Wordpad