Often you will find yourself in situations where you either need to open a Microsoft Office document that someone else has sent you, or save an OpenOffice.org document in a Microsoft Office compatible format so that someone else can open it. One of the most useful features of OpenOffice.org is that it is very compatible with Microsoft Office. It can be used to both open Microsoft Office documents, such as Word documents or Excel documents, and save documents in other formats such as Microsoft Office documents or even plain text.

If you only ever use your home computer with OpenOffice.org installed, and don’t ever find a need to share documents with other friends or colleagues, you might not ever have had the need to use OpenOffice.org to perform file format conversions. At my day job they only use Microsoft Office, but I do not have access to the programs at home. If I need to bring documents home to edit them, I am able to do so with OpenOffice.org. This episode covers some of the basics of using OpenOffice.org to work with Microsoft Office documents.