Open Office and MS Office Compatibility

[Miskatonic]

When I downloaded Open Office a couple years ago, I was under the impression that the files could be read both ways. This is to say that I could create a spreadsheet in OO and MS would read it, and visa verse. I emailed several OO spreadsheets to my father who uses Office 2003, and when he opened them they just appeared to be a bunch of gibberish.

To clarify for myself, does OO only open MS Office files, and not the other way around?

[shadowpr]

Did you save them in ms office format? If you did, then they should be able to be opened in excel.

[Miskatonic]

Lol, to be honest I can't remember. At least that answers my question. Thanks!

[strollin]

The default for OpenOffice is to save files in ODF format, when saving a document you need to use the dropdown to select the MS format. If you didn't explicitly save the file in a MS format then OO used it's default format. You should be able to call those documents up and resave them in MS format then resend them to your dad.