Common Word Processors A 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