Common Word ProcessorsA comparison

MS Word

Open Office Writer

Wordpad

Dean Steichen

May, 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