Office 2007 on Sabayon

[pkbest]

I browsed google for a good hour trying to see if anyone had installed office 2007. I am currently dual boot w/ vista because I am in a Computer Science class here at my University on Office 2007. I like using OOffice, but it wont work for the homework i have to do. it has to be done in office 2007. I was wondering what everyone thought was the best way to try and do this:
wine? or Virtual Box? I read online that office 2007 does not currently run very well on Crossover Office, can anyone confirm this? or disprove it?

I want to move to sabayon being my ONLY OS on my computer, and get rid of Vi$ta.

Thanks,

[Stupot]

Why do you need Office 2007? OpenOffice can read in office 2007 file formats (.docx) and it can save files in the older office file format (.doc) which office 2007 can read.

[dunsurfin]

If you need Office 2007 then the best way is probably VirtualBox. I run XP Pro in VirtualBox on Sabayon x86 4-r1 (fully updated) for the one "game" I can't get to work with wine and for a couple of other bits and pieces I miss in Linux. I have tried Office 2003 in Crossover but it's not very successful for my needs and the codeweavers site itself only gives a bronze to Office 2007. If you decide to try VirtualBox I recommend the howto in the wiki
http://wiki.sabayonlinux.org/index.php? ... Virtualbox

[xlnagla]

Let me start off by saying, the two previous posts are right. OpenOffice.org is a free equivalent of office 2007 that is fully compatible with Microsoft Office products. this is what we support. That being said, it is most certainly possible to install Office 2007 in Linux - it's linux, everything is possible!

here are the wineHQ overviews on Linux and Word 2007:

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... &iId=12811
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... ngId=37048

It looks like you're going to need to downgrade your version of wine to 1.1.14 - if you decide not to go with OpenOffice, the supported, stable, and officially loved linux alternative to Microsoft's Office software, then I can certainly walk you through downgrading wine, and point you to the forums for installing office 2007. As I have no Office installer myself (and no desire to download non-free software illegally), I can't quite help in that department. But there are many who can.

~xlnagla

[pkbest]

w00t wow.. im impressed with the responses im getting

ok i know ur thinking why not use open office, the reason is.. i have to create and do things for this class in Office 2007. THe class is called "CS 206- Advanced Office 2007 "

The book we use tells exactly how do things as far as access and excel in office 2007. If OOffice would move to a tabbed version, or identical to 07 it might be ok.. i dont know. I jus dont want to fail this class for not using the right program. You think open office would still work?

For Dunsurfin: when u use virtualbox, do you notice any performance issues?

also, another reason i have to use virtual box probably is the fact that my printer according to openprinting, is a giant paper weight. I have a wifi printer from Lexmark. I wish i would have known they were bad on linux support BEFORE i bought the thing...

[xlnagla]

Well, that certainly does make sense! We'll get you spinning up on wine in no time. as a warning, virtualbox does not provide access to your actual hardware - if your wireless printer is bluetooth, then I fear you've still got a giant paperweight - might be able to get it working some other way though, don't fret!

I think for wine we'll go with the portage method instead of the entropy method to get you up and running, and then fix things with entropy when we've verified that Office 2007 works.

for starters, open a command line and type in su

then type "emerge --sync && emerge =wine-1.1.14"

naturally without the quotes! That should take quite some time (think hours), but at the end of it you've completely downgraded your wine and its dependencies. Then try to re-run the installer for Office 2007 by typing in a new terminal window:

wine <installer>.exe

where <installer>.exe is just whatever the setup program is called. If that works successfully, then you should have office added to your kmenu, just like any other app. There are a few other hacks needed to get things working - those are outlined on the two pages I linked here originally.

This should get you started on the process. Or you could go the vm route proposed by dunsurfin - that will work too.

~xlnagla

[dunsurfin]

For Dunsurfin: when u use virtualbox, do you notice any performance issues?

Apart from a slight delay (about 2 or 3 minutes) after "XP" has opened to it becoming operational, I have found the performance faster than a traditional XP install. Presumably because it all takes place in one "real" file. I think you may have problems with the printer though. I ditched my Lexmark and bought a cheap HP deskjet.

[Fitzcarraldo]

OpenOffice.org is a free equivalent of office 2007 that is fully compatible with Microsoft Office products.

They are not fully compatible. I'd say "mostly compatible" would be a better description. I use both Word and OpenOffice Writer extensively at work and at home, and both for simple and complex documents. I find their files are interchangeable without problems for simple, straightforward text layouts, but have had terrible problems with OpenOffice Writer wrecking Word documents with more complex text layouts, colours, indents, tables, embedded photos and drawings, tables of contents, and so on. I find that OpenOffice Writer is not properly compatible with bullets and outline numbering in a Word document. If I'm writing a document containing predominantly text, simple indentation and headers for a Word-using audience then I have no qualms about creating it using OpenOffice Writer, but if I'm preparing a complex document then I have to stick to Word because other people who recieve my documents use Word. Just recently I used OpenOffice Writer to make a simple edit to a sentence in a complex Word document and, open opening it later in Word, I found that OpenOffice Writer had messed up a lot of the document, requiring several hours of editing to fix. So Word and OpenOffice documents are not fully equivalent. Whether one likes it or not, to ensure compatibility with other Word users you need to have Word installed, as you cannot be sure that a document created using OpenOffice Writer will be as you intended if it is opened in Word. Likewise, you cannot be sure that a Word document edited using OpenOffice Writer will be as you intended if later opened in Word.