Learning to Like Ubuntu & Linux

I was coming in from Sunday School this past week into the main church service when I was summoned to the audio/visual booth. There was to be a presentation that morning and the PowerPoint file was not compatible with the A/V computer. Why? Because the file was created in Office 2007 & the computer ran Office 2003.

Now the answer to this dilemma is that the A/V people should have downloaded the Microsoft patch to let Office 2003 open and run Office 2007 files. But it is not an automatic patch. You have to go and find it (I know after having a similar experience on my laptop this past semester with a presenter).

So what do I do?

I had installed a Linux partition on my laptop on Friday running Ubuntu. As a part of the installation, the files for OpenOffice had been installed.

So I opened OpenOffice Presentation.

Opened the Powerpoint.

Saved it to Office 2003 format.

Sat back and enjoyed the presentation.

Now all the A/V people have to do is get the Microsoft update and there will be no other issues. But why should they have to go find it? Why wasn't it automatically pushed to them. People with Office 2003 will (at some point or another) open Office 2007 files. They don't want to find out that it doesn't work. Most times, they won't even know why it is not working or how to get it to work. All they want it to do is have it work.

So thanks, OpenOffice, for just working.

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