Does Microsoft Office 2010 still have incompatibility issues with LibreOffice

I know Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2007 have some incompatibility issues with LibreOffice. For example if I create a document in LibreOffice with doc format and try to open it in Office 2003/2007, the margin, tables and images might/will move a bit around.

Reading that Microsoft Office 2010 is "more compatible" are this issues resolved that when I create a doc or odt file, it will be correctly read in Office 2010.

Note that I say THEY have incompatibility issues. For what I have seen, the correct format is the one used in LibreOffice/OpenOffice and not the other way around. It is more standardized.

UPDATE - Would like to add that in 2 pages of Wikipedia, Microsoft Office 2010 is mentioned as having compatibility for version 1.1 of the ODF.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2010

Because of this, I made the question just to be sure from experience of other LibreOffice users in Ubuntu.

UPDATE 2 - The European IT authorities have come up with several ideas to improve the OOXML compatibility in LibreOffice. they include all the problems I mentioned like images, macros, frames and such. More info here and here.

I want to also add that after LibreOffice 4.x, the compatibility level has risen. There is more compatibility between both office suite.

Solution 1:

With my personal experience, I say that NO they are not.

A .doc file created in LibreOffice suffers from some changes when it is reopened in MS Office 2010. You will also feel that your header and footer settings are disturbed.

Same in the case of .ppt files.

I prepared a seminar of robotics in LibreOffice and saved it as a .ppt file. But, at the time of presentation my college offered me a Windows computer with MS Office 2010. When I opened the .ppt on Windows, I have to make several changes before presentation such as page width, table size, heading size and images (specially charts and bars).

Solution 2:

In my experience it is completely unrealistic to suggest that in dealing with an organisation of any size that relies on Microsoft products, anyone can survive by using LibreOffice. I work in a university (in theory, more open to experimentation, difference and tolerance than, say, businesses). Our admin constantly bombards us with documents containing complex tables, forms, formating etc. Very soon I realised that opening, modifying or creating anything like that in OpenOffice/LibreOffice is asking for trouble. You can never be sure you are seeing all the (possibly critical) information that is there, and if you fill a document in and forward it, it is almost certain someone will complain and you will have to do it again using MS Word. Line managers and colleagues do not understand the technical issues or politics involved. All they want is the job done and an easy life, so you are left looking weird.

I have LibreOffice on my netbook and I must say I cannot rely on it for self-sufficiency. On one occasion a couple of years ago I couldn't open a password-protected Word doc because OpenOffice back then didn't support passwords! The problem is I was abroad and I had to reply to a work email urgently. That's when I said never again. I had to install Microsoft Word. I nearly abandoned Ubuntu that day. I wish I could rely on LibreOffice, but I am afraid this is not possible. It may be Microsoft's fault but that makes little difference in practice. Clearly, when people don't see compatibility issues either they deal with very, very simple documents, or they are very biased.

Solution 3:

I have struggled with this for years. The fact is that you cannot use a workflow that includes passing documents back and forth between any version of Microsoft Office and Libre Office -- with the possible exception of very simple spreadsheets and word documents.

You either need to force your associates to move to Libre Office or conform and use MS Office yourself. It's a huge issue for Libre Office in a world where MS Office is still the dominant player.