Extremely unhappy with this program. Tried to install it on my flash drive twice; first time it didn't work & deleted itself when I removed the drive, 2'nd time it corrupted my drive. I can't even format the poor thing now. I'm sticking to AbiWord & I urge anyone considering this piece of junk to do the same.

Best alternative for those without MO.

Helped me in my diffcult times.

I just suggest the tricky way for changing the language of the portable version, if someone need it:

1- install your own language version on your PC
2- install the portable version on your USB drive
3- copy and overwrite the whole folder X:\Programfiles\OpenOffice.org 3\ to the USB path Y:\PortableApps\OpenOfficePortable\App\OOo

enjoy !

I use it as my secondary office suite.(First Full OpenOffice then portable version)Great work!

use the 2.4 version
in Program\bootstrap.ini
and change:
BaseInstallation=$ORIGIN/..
UserInstallation=$ORIGIN/../User

then you don't need any launcher from x-drive or portable apps

I Like Open Office because once I have got my document ready with text and pictures where I want them. I can then just save it as a pdf file ready to email or print. Has anyone ever try to save as a pdf file in Microsoft Office? I suppose you don't get all what you pay for in M$ Office.

No real alternative to the one-and-only Microsoft Office package, but for people who don’t have the money and just write a letter a month or two, it’s perfect.

Unfortuntely it’s using JAVA which makes this application very, very slow.

OpenOffice 3.0 doesn't run on systems with Win95/98/ME !
Last version for this systems: 2.4.1

Both of the projects (OO from PortableApps.com and X-OO) seem discontinued. Still no sign of OO 3.x portable almost 60 days after official release. Previous OO 2.x was updated almost on a daily basis.

I would like to have 2 versions of oo, oo 3 for reading .docx, and ,xlsx files and oo2.4 for other work [poor performance of v3]. I do not have a flash drive. Can I use the portable on the main drive , in parallel with oo3 [oo will not let me re-instal oo 2.4 and keep oo3 installed

Have promoted OpenOffice to my clients for many years now. The only compatablity problems I've seen is with very complex spreadsheets & documents made w/M$ using complex macros & other special stuff, but with some work they can usually be reconstructed w/OpenOffice. OpenOffice portable is a dream come true! Now I carry my invoices & other spreadsheets on a flash drive. Combined with EssentialPIM, NotePad++, TreePad & a couple of other portable programs, I carry everything I need for my Traveling Tech business on my keychain at all times! I now only need to setup my laptop once or twice a month if at all! I can't thank the open source community enough!

OpenOffice is better than MS Office 2K3 in many ways.

I play pen and paper RPG games (DnD, DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes M.E.G.S. version) and like having small portable reference material (charts and tables) in my pocket for those times I get ideas outside the games. My current project is a 3.5 by 2.5 (playing card sized) bound 16 page flipbook with several charts and a table of most of the powers found in the books and on the web for M.E.G.S. (Mayfair Exponential Gaming System).

I just finished searching the web for 2 days trying to find a way to have text in a cell upside down in Excel without using WordArt or making the layout on the edge and using Landscape Print mode. I even began a search for true upside-down (reversed, flipped) fonts (mainly Courier New). I couldn't get any answers i liked. Also, I wanted better control over cell height and width. Just what type of measurement does MS Office use anyway, twips and points? How many twips or points to a printed inch, vertically and horizontally?
I popped in a usb key I made a while back and fired up OpenOffice Calc on a whim and looked at Format Cells|Alignment and there it was: full, true 360 degree text rotation.
And the cells can be sized in parts of an inch too (.10 gives 10 lines per inch, in both vertically and horizontally). The limit of 2 decimal places is a bit small (3 or 4 would be better for 6 or 8 lines per inch, cell sizes .1666 or .125). Also the restriction that you can't delete a row or column if they pass through merged cell(s) (it can't delete the row or column then recombined the cells as before) or sort a formatted set of data needs to be fixed.

That flipbook has 6 collections of cells per page (35 columns x 25 rows per group, all cells are .10 inches by .10 inches, formatted as 7 merged columns, 2 groups normal rotation, 2 groups true upside down rotation -180 degrees and repositioned-, 2 groups normal rotation). The rotations were used to cut down on the amount of cutting and gluing I would need to do.
+---+---+ -, +, | = borders and folds
| N | N | Normal rotation
+-C-+---+ Cut here, and fold
| U | U | True upside down
+---+-C-+ Cut here, and fold
| N | N | Normal rotation
+---+---+ N folds to N, U folds to U, N backs to U
This would have been next to impossible to do in Excel.

This package is brilliant, especially if you dislike Micro$oft products. For your own PC, i would recommend you get the installable version though, the portable version takes all the coffee break to load.

openoffice is one big program. can't just install calc and write.
http://portableapps.com/support/openoffice_portable#custom_install

I don't need any other components other than calc -spreadsheet and write - text editor.

Does that mean I could delete certain related files (which ones?) and I end up having just 2 programs minus the largest junk of 241mb openoffice, or we need to wait somebody to do a portable write and portable calc only
urgent opinions please

I use this on my jump drive and use OpenOffice in general on my M$ Windows systems. It works quite well and never any issues with original Micro$oft documents. Couldn't be happier with the product. The fact that its open source and free are just bonuses.

Best office and best of all its FREE, one of many tools you can give you friends and family

takes like 1% of the space of micro$oft office (2GB+!), Openoffice (100MB) and can even fit on USB Stick :P

An outstanding application becomes even better. Many thanks again to John Haller at Portable Apps.

Is it possible to start portable OO applications by simpress.exe, smath.exe, soffice.exe etc. from "{OfficeDir}\App\openoffice\program"?
What's a difference between them and their portable analogs?

Hi Guys
I have a question for you has any body run this small program on a PDA say running Windows Mobile 2003se..if so let me know thank you.

Is anybody having a problem saving changes to the program options? I tried doing the tweak under "Memory" where you make changes to the Undo settings, Graphics Cache, etc. to make it run faster, but the program does not remember the changes after a restart of OpenOffice.

The loading time is due to the fact that OO has to load all of its files off of the Flash Drive which is far slower than a HDD. As for the settings there may be no way to fix that. It is probably because registries are not created so your setting have no where to be saved.

Loading time is a pain, and it doesnt seem to remember my settings when I disable java - any tips?

Seems to work fine. My office uses MS Office 03 but when I work in the field that's not readily available Open Office works with all my Word Doc's and Excel Spread sheets . They open without any problem in MS when I'm back in the office... No trouble!

Try to download normal german version, install to your computer and then copy them over the ones, that are on your USB device. I guess it will work...

Just a great piece of software, now even better as a portable version!
Is there any way to change the language for the User Interface (Options, Language settings) to something other then english - I would like to see german .-)

I have always liked portal applications because I need to use different computers alot. Thanks for putting this site togeather -- http://at-the-water-cooler.com/blog/2007/08/08/say-you-need-to-take-your-office-documents-with-you-but/

Outstanding application and portable! Many thanks to John Haller at Portable Apps (http://portableapps.com.

Saved my project. I'm on vacation and needed to modify a MS PowerPoint presentation. My hotel's computer doesn't have PowerPoint. Ran OpenOffice Portable's IMPRESS program off of my memory stick. Loaded the presentation, made changes, saved as a PowerPoint presentation, e-mailed to happy customer, back to the pool! Thanks, Open Office!

The interface takes a little adjusting to, but everything is in there, it's much more configurable & lighter than M$. Its a huge improvement on previous versions. I have nothing installed other than windows itself, I find this a huge improvement on M$. So thanks alot to John for making the zero-install, and to the whole open source community.

Open Office is absolutely brilliant, and I use it all the time in preference to Microsoft Office. Impress is great as a movie title creator, in addition to its main uses as a presentation program and a flash applet generator

Just works and is free , what more can you ask for
has open document format, none of this MS rubbish
brilliant

>> Hey guys help me. It doesnt work for me. It shows loding and then dies. doesnt open at all. :( I like the normal version but I wish to have it on pendrive when i am at univ


i have the very same problem.. it's possibly because openoffice is installed, and openoffice portable checks the settings in the registry gets confused and the proceeds to die.

Why using Microsoft Office where this software is free, simple, intuitive and complete ?

Yeah!

Open Office Org is simply amazing!
Interface is like OfficeXP, and works great. They are improving it every single releases. Version 1x is good, but has a lot of imcompatibilities when running M$-Office docs. Version 2.03, is more compatb., is better, stable and they have corrected several bugs.
Those people that think OO is slow, try to disable Java and modify memory options ;)
I have been looking for version 2.03 portable, but didn't find yet on the Net. Anybody knows when it will be available?

Thanx a lot!

Great alternative. Yeah, right. You get what you pay for, not that I don't appreciate John Haller's work of making it portable, but Open Office acts and feels like Office 97.

Hey guys help me. It doesnt work for me. It shows loding and then dies. doesnt open at all. :( I like the normal version but I wish to have it on pendrive when i am at univ.

If I did not already have Microsoft Office 2003, I would definitely use this as it is a great alternative and of course, it's open source.