Archive for the 'Spreadsheet' category

NeoOffice is a OS X port of OppenOffice.org by a group of developers who have thought from the beginning that the Main OO.o team was taking the wrong tack in offering X-11 support on the Mac.

Aqua-native, includes both PPC and Intel binaries, allows Spotlight to index both content and metadata of OpenOffice and OpenDocument files.

Importantly, NeoOffice v2.1 arrives on March 27th, and it will immediately include support for Microsoft Office 2007 document formats.

OpenOffice, the free desktop suite competing directly against MS Office, reached an important milestone with the availability of version 2.2, Release Candidate 3. This time, we believe, the officiel release of v2.2 is near.

Some of the most sensitive improvements were expected by the users:

• Calc should improve notably the management of dynamic pivot tables from Excel origin Excel (a powerful tool that is too often under-appreciated or ignored).
• PDF files: More control possibilities/options, including the ability to generate in-PDF bookmarks.
• Adaptation to Vista for a better compatibility.
• Appearance of SQL requests inside requests for the database manager.
• Stability improvements on the Mac version (along with size reduction).
• Better compatibility with Slackware, NetBSD, Linux 64, Linux SPARC.

For a download (still free, of course), go and check on the OpenOffice web site.

When several people work simultaneously on one single Excel document, things may become a little difficult if everybody is doing modifications (or trying to do them) on their own. It is usually necessary to bring some tool in, if you want to handle correctly the comparison between all the modified versions and to lead/guide you in the process of re-synchronizing all changes in one common file (obviously some of the modifications may be in conflict with each other).

For the simplest files (text files) there are a few famous tools (on Windows PC, there is the excellent WinMerge freeware that presents -side by side- both files and allows to quickly compare and choose which changes to keep or not).

But when reaching more complex documents like Excel files, WinMerge is no longer enough and you need a specialized tool. I believe that there is no free software tool for the task. However, there a few shareware tools (here you should understand “cheap, but not free” or “paying, but not expensive”).

• Monkey Merge 1.29 ($16, free to try). Merge Word, Excel and PDF docs
• SobolSoft Excel Merge (Combine) Cells, Columns & Data Software 1.1 ($19.82, free to try). Join, consolidate selected cells by row or column. Cell merging allows content of many cells to be put into one. Cells content is seperated by a space, comma or user-defined character(s).
• Diff Doc 2.45 ($24, free to try)
• Compare suite 3.0 ($60, free to try)
• Synkronizer 9.1 ($149, free to try), only the Developer version provides for combining comparison results
• Excel Compare ($30), only produces a comparison report. Not evaluated.

So, I tested several of these tools. Here are the ideas I extracted from this work.

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I had been advising to use PDF Creator to produce PDF files from any program under Windows. It appears that the product does not work with Vista. Even worse, sometimes, it seems that its mere installation is breaking havoc in all Vista printing and when it happens, it may be difficult to uninstall.

Just wait for a future new version that would solve the issue.

We’re French, we’re finding this funny. Microsoft just confirmed that the installation of MS-Office 2007 rudely removes all non-French Outlook Express spelling checkers (why keep the French one?). I guess most non-French speaking people don’t like it since Microsoft does not seem to have a solution.

I believe that each and every Excel user already met the case where they open a file to receive a message dialog box announcing that there is a macro in the file and asking whether or not Excel should allow its execution. Unfortunately, in 99% of the cases, there is actually no macro and you may wonder how to stop this message (whatever you answer to the dialog box, it will come again and again).

But, today, I bring you the answer, the solution, the way out. (more…)

It is now the time to look back at the year 2006 and to check what you really liked in the Roumazeilles.net web site. So, here are the posts viewed the most in the past year. Is it a surprise?

• Canon 40D crushes 30D prices, at least, that was the rumour. But the prices went down anyway…
• Masai Mara - Lions
• No Canon 40D in view at the Photokina
• Internationale Zurich Gruppe, in defence of individual financial investors
• NikonCafe.com, a forum for the Nikon lovers
• Photo deer hunting during the rutting season
• Inkjet inks - Pigment or dye-based? A technical comparison

The same data for the posts in the French version of the web site.

You are thinking about moving from Microsoft Office (expensive commercial bloatware ;-)) to OpenOffice (free). A few questions you can ask to orgniaze your transition, before you jump ahead.

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For a very long time, one of the greatest hits of search engines sending visitors to Roumazeilles.net has been “free download word”. Now, we are nearly in position to offer another advice than the usual Go download OpenOffice.

I still consider OpenOffice as the best replacement for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but new opportunities are appearing. First, Google announced the availability of Google Spreadsheets and Writely. While still in beta stage, these applications are downloaded on the run from the web freely and will be supported by advertisment in the application as soon as the beta-stage is off.

Feeling the heat of the competition no doubt, Microsoft revealed that it was considering seriously the possibility of putting Works (too often not considered by buyers of MS-Office) on the list of freely (and legally) available application. They would use the same business model of including ad banners in the application itself.

For the moment, it is difficult to assume the success of such a strategy. Google is offering a very simplified product (Writely does not include in its free word processor important goodies such as mail merge or WordArt; And Google Spreadsheets still does not have the ability to create graphics) and Microsoft is probably just trying to kick Google while it’s still young with Works which has always been their cheap solution to counter the arguments against Word and Excel.

Furthermore, it is not decided yet if you - the user - will accept the presence of advertisment inside the application. I know that the Opera web browser has long been ads-supported (I did not really mind the presence of the banner at the top of the browser window), but the arrival of ad-free Mozilla Firefox forced them to remove completely this feature. So, advertisment may stay as a temporary option in the strategy of a software developer and basing all your business model on that may be very difficult and dangerous.

So, for the time being and probably for the near future too, this is still Go download OpenOffice (remember that it is also available freely for Mac OS X (under X11)).

PDF Creator (the free open-source PDF production application) has moved to a new web site : PDFforge.

We just learned that the OpenOffice development team will show its desktop software suite running on Mac OS-X in the upcoming Apple Expo (next month in Paris). Welcome to the Mac lovers in the world of free Word, Excel and PowerPoint (we remember that Microsoft Office is seriously abandonned on the Mac nowadays).

You thought that they wouldn’t dare: From the 2nd of August, Microsoft is going to charge 1.50$ per download of the beta version of Microsoft Office.

Yes! Now, there are so many crzay people willing to test a bug-ridden version of Microsoft Office that the firm from Redmond can make them pay for this privilege.

I had given the advice of not installing this beta, with good reasons. But here is one more that I did not see coming: You may have to pay for the official right to crash your PC. It’s up to you to see if it’s worth the effort. I still think it’s not and I keep going and downloading free OpenOffice.

Source: ClubIC.