Using the OpenDocument Format in Microsoft Office
Last week, I had a user come by the tech office who needed to open and print a document created with OpenOffice.org. While we’re a pretty open environment at Payton, we are somewhat Microsoft, and oddly enough we didn’t have OpenOffice installed anywhere, since the only machines that run Linux are servers and we have Microsoft Office on all the workstations. I downloaded and installed it to my personal machine and converted his documents and he was on his way. However, this got me thinking. There had to be way to open OpenDocument files in Microsoft Office. This is what I came up with: The Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office (http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/). It’s free and it works, so it fits the bill for me. My only real complaint is that you need a Sun account to download the plugin (although you probably already have one).