Difference between Microsoft Office and Open Office

Difference between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice, includes philosophical, Usability and Interface , Sharing and support differences between the two packages. The Key difference is Microsoft Office is a suite of different applications, servers and services that was developed by Microsoft Company for Windows and Mac OS X operating systems in1989. OpenOffice is open-source, free software that is available to everyone on the market for download.

Microsoft Office is a suite of different applications, servers and services that was developed by Microsoft Company for Windows and Mac OS X operating systems in1989. Microsoft Office is wholly owned by the Microsoft Corporation and is developed, tested, marketed and sold by the company. The Office system is available in different versions for different users, such as Professional, Home and Student. The MS Office software charges a price on its software on the basis of the cost incurred plus profits. 

Though initially, MS Office only comprised Word, Excel and PowerPoint, it now offers various different applications and programs such as Outlook/Entourage, Access, InfoPath, OneNote, Project, Publisher, SharePoint Workspace (formerly known as Groove), Visio, Office InterConnect and Office Picture Manager.Microsoft Word created the doc format, which is de facto format for storing document files on the computer. The new versions from Office 2007 started using a new XML-based format (docx). MS Office offers applications such as Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Draw, and Math.

Open Office, previously named as StarOffice, was originally developed as proprietary software, similar to MS Office, by StarDivision. In 1999, StarDivision was acquired by Sun Microsystems and in 2000 Sun announced that it was making the source code of StarOffice available for free download to build an open-source development community for the software and as a free and open alternative to MS Office. It was renamed as OpenOffice.org. Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle in 2010, who continued developing the software and it is now sold under the name Apache OpenOffice.

OpenOffice is open-source, free software that is available to everyone on the market. OpenOffice offers software applications such as word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, formula editor, and database management applications. OpenOffice’s default document format is the OpenDocument Format (ODF) for files, though it also has the ability to open and read MS Office formats. OpenOffice also offers the option of saving files and documents in MS Office 2003 formats. The user interface of the Open Office is similar to that of the MS Office 2003. OpenOffice is supported on various platforms such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD, OpenVMS, OS/2 and IRIX and can also support over 120 languages. 

Here are the some Key Difference between Microsoft Office (MS Office) and Open Office (Apache Open Office)

	Microsoft Office	Open Office
1. Definition	Microsoft Office is a suite of different applications, servers and services such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc	Open Office is a suite of open-source office productivity software suite that contains word processor, spreadsheets, presentations, etc
2. Developer	Microsoft	StarDivision, later acquired by Sun Microsystems which was also later acquired by Oracle
3. Costs	It will cost around 1k Rs. prices may vary depending on version	Is a free software
4. Update	you would have to pay to update the suite	Updates to open-source applications also cost nothing
5. Changes	It is a proprietary software you can not change the code and can not Publish it	It is Open source software. You can improve the program or build something completely new with it and release your changes to the public
6. Operating Systems	Supports Windows and Mac platforms	Supports almost all platforms including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD, OpenVMS, OS/2 and IRIX
7. Interface	Office versions after 2007 included a ‘ribbon’ interface	The current version of Open Office uses 3's interface, is similar to the MS Office 2003
8.Interface for Application	In MS office you need to open each application separately	A single interface for the whole suite . OpenOffice provides an overall gateway to easily get to any of the individual components
9. File size	MS Office have large file sizes	OpenOffice's native format generally creates much smaller files than Microsoft Office
10. Documents	Opens all Microsoft document files, such as doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx	Supports all MS Office files
11. Support	Is developed professionally and if you have a licensed program you can receive professional support	Is an open software, a user can receive help from open forums online
12. Sharing	MS Office has the ability to share its documents; although a person who has Office 2003 may need to convert documents from 2007 and 2010 to 2003 format in order to read it	Open Office also allows users to share documents. However, a document created in Open Office will only be supported by MS Office 2003 versions
13.Email Integration	one of the big advantages of Microsoft Office is its integration with Microsoft Outlook, it allow to preview Microsoft Office documents directly in Outlook	OpenOffice supports emailing documents but not previewing
14. Components	Word, Excel, Outlook/Entourage, PowerPoint, Access, InfoPath, OneNote, Project, Publisher, SharePoint Workspace (formerly known as Groove), Visio, Office InterConnect, Office Picture Manager	penOffice offers software applications such as word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, formula editor, and database management applications.
15 Specific Features	MS office offers some Specific Features like Grammar checking, Conditional formatting, Document-viewing options "Smart Art" diagrams which offers a lot more flexibility and control	Open office offers only some of these features with less flexibility and control

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