Office program choices

[jj1j1]

I've been fighting with Libre Office Writer for the last few days, and would whole heatedly like to try something else. A few problems I'm having are; paragraphs, and indents change positions,(indents move about ten spaces more after a save), bullet points change sizes as I create them, and in between saves. The indent, and the paragraph problem occurs when I save to docx format. I see that it states, in the save as dialog box, that formatting could be effected if saved to docx format. Thing is, the doc I'm preparing is a resume, and I need to be sure the format will not change if read from a windows machine which is more than likely what an employer will be using. Am I going to run into this problem with any open source office suite?

[Jerry3904]

I save as a PDF, and send that. If I need a file that can be edited in Word, then I save it as a simple .doc, then let Windows (8.1) take care of the up formatting. There are other options, check the just upgraded Users Manual.

[nathan2423]

I am very happy using WPS (Kingsoft) but not the 2019 current version 11 which is massively revised and bloated from the prior version, but the older 2016 version (one back) which can me made to look exactly like the older Microsoft Word with the classic Toolbar. https://www.wps.com/download/

I also use and am pleased with Softmaker office (Textmaker and Planmaker).

I rarely have compatibility issues with either one. I continue to try to use Libreoffice when possible, but if I need to be 100% sure of compatibility I use WPS Writer or Textmaker.

[JayM]

I save as a PDF, and send that. If I need a file that can be edited in Word, then I save it as a simple .doc, then let Windows (8.1) take care of the up formatting. There are other options, check the just upgraded Users Manual.

A .pdf is safer for sharing documents anyway as they're (usually, unless someone has pdf editing software) read only, so you can be sure that no one can alter your resume. Plus .pdf is a universal format that can be viewed in any operating system and will always look exactly the same.

(Although I understand that some companies' HR departments insist on a resume in MS Word format for whatever reason, and may reject non-compliant ones out of hand. Perhaps they use an OCR system that scans Word documents and saves their contents to a database, in which case shame on the people who made that system for it not being compatible with pdfs.)

[jj1j1]

I save as a PDF, and send that.

A pdf is a good alternative that I hadn't considered. I was concentrating on word format because I did run across a site that required .docx format.

[JayM]

There are web-based converters that can convert pdf to docx if a specific would-be employer requires that format. Just do a web search and you'll find loads of them.

[jj1j1]

Perhaps they use an OCR system that scans Word documents and saves their contents to a database, in which case shame on the people who made that system for it not being compatible with pdfs.

I've been studying this actually,and I believe you are correct. I've been applying to large companies recently, and have learned that many use application tracking systems that search for key words. If those keywords are not in the resume forget about it. In the manufacturing field I believe most companies run on Windows considering Mastercam, Solidworks, and Autodesk software, (to name a few), requires it, and chances are that their ATS systems are also running on Windows, and may require a resume in a Windows format. Although if it was a simple OCR system then it would convert the resume into an image, and then OCR would scan for text. I don't see why it would matter what format the resume was in that case...but I know very little about it, so I'll stop talking :lipsrsealed:

[JayM]

I used to do desktop PC support for the personnel department in a larger city's government and they did use an OCR-to-database resume system. I remember it had a paper feed tray on top for scanning paper resumes, and there was also a means of sending electronic documents to it but I don't remember if they were required to be MS Word docs or not. This was almost 20 years ago though. You'd think that these OCR systems could support a wider variety of document formats by now, but who knows? (The only reason I became familiar with that system was because I had to fix it when it broke down, which it did several times a year.)

[KBD]

I second Softmaker Office. The free version is Freeoffice:
https://www.freeoffice.com/en/
I handles Microsoft file formats very well.

[stevedude]

I have to 'third' that notion. I'm also a FreeOffice (Softmake Office) user. I have literally tried all of the Linux offerings, LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, WPS, Zoho, Apache Open Office, Open365, Google, and a few others I can't even think of and FreeOffice by far supports Microsoft better (IMHO) than any of these listed.

What did it for me was I have a complicated formatted Resume', and no other Office program/suite was able to open up my document with all of the formatting intact. I've been using it for a few years now between home and my office which is a Microsoft-based organization and there have been zero issues.

WPS is the 'prettiest' of the lot, but FreeOffice has a similar Microsoft Ribbon bar setup and all of the modern features like save to PDF, EPUB export/support, etc.