1. Common Word Processors A comparison
MS Word
Open Office Writer
Wordpad
Dean Steichen
May, 2013

2. 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

3. Common Uses Notes to friends and acquaintances More formal letters
Documents with images like Holiday Letters
Posters
Reports with tables
Others

4. File Formats Supported
MS Word 2007, 2010, ….
DOCX (default), DOC (Word ‘ 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

5. 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.

6. A Simple Note - Word

7. A Simple Note - Writer

8. A Simple Note - Wordpad

9. A Letter - Word

10. A Letter - Writer

11. A Letter – Libre Writer

12. A Letter - Wordpad

13. Documents with Images - Word

14. Documents with Images - Writer

15. Documents with Images - Wordpad

16. Posters - Word

17. Posters - Writer

18. Posters – Wordpad

19. Reports - Word

20. Reports - Writer

21. Reports - Wordpad

22. 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

23. MS Office Suite = Open Office Suite
MS Office = Open Office
Word = Writer
Excel = Calc
PowerPoint = Impress
Access = Base

24. Questions

25. Demos?
MS Word
OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer
Wordpad