Hi 
I agree that Base seems a bit of a mess but if you follow Andreas' guidance then it hopefully works better. There are other people on this list that are great at helping with Base but he seems better at giving a better over-view of Base. Most of the problems appear to be with wizards and stuff. Also it's a very different thing than Access so trying to wrap your head around the basic concept is a major Pita. I wouldn't migrate your databases from Access to Base just yet. Just settle in with the rest of LO first. Base doesn't seem to have so many devs working on it as the other apps but it may gain a few in a month or so. The docs team are working on an excellent handbook for Base which may help people understand it better and once you understand the basic ideas it's really quite exciting (imo). Tons of potential but needs a good pruning before it can really grow.
Impress is also not so great at the moment but at least it's easier to understand what you want from it and it kinda makes sense. Again, seems to have less devs than Writer or Calc. Draw seems to be more popular and seems to gain more attention for the increases in it's functionality.
Generally i would avoid the early release in any branch. I like to try them but only on one of my own systems, not on any of my colleagues. It's good to try the x.x.0 - x.x.3 but just for your own benefit, to post bug-reports against and hopefully catch the interest of the most possible devs before they move on to other things (such as the next branch). Each branch becomes much more stable by the x.x.4 and from then on just increases in stability without gaining much extra functionality. Better stability means you are less likely to find something that needs to have a bug-report posted. The x.x.6 tends to be very solid. Think of that 3rd number as a "Service Pack" but divide by 2 because MS only goes up to Sp3.
I suspect the recalculation in Calc might be a memory issue? Perhaps try
Tools - Options - Memory
and bump a lot of those values up. Also look in
Tools - Options - Calc
to see if something weird is in there. There is a key that forces recalculation but i don't know it.
The in-built help files are not as useful as the official documentation. You can get the latest and even pre-release guides from
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications
Some of the 3.3.x guides have been translated into a few other languages but not many. To get the in-built help you have to download it and then install after installing the main part of LO. For example the 2nd 'button' on
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/?type=win-x86&lang=en-GB&version=3.5.6
Note that you can choose from many other languages. That link is for English (Gb/Uk) but for my colleagues i have added Gujaratii, Italian, Japanese and more so that different logins on those machines can have different languages.
I definitely agree that LO needs to far exceed MS Office in order to even get looked at. In many ways i think it is far better but i can admit that it does have apparent weaknesses that are more likely to be noticed than the good stuff. It's the same for people from any minority group. If you are 10 times better but they notice 1 thing they think is odd then they focus on the 1 thing. However, as Gandhi said "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win" so don't be discouraged. I think LO has pushed things from a decade of being stifled in step 1 into somewhere between 2 & 3 and in some places (such as Brasil) step 4 already!
When migrating away from MSO it's usually better to keep using it but gradually use LO more but at the start only for a few things or even just one or two things until you get more familiar with the difference.
Regards from
Tom
________________________________
From: Pertti Rönnberg <ptjr@elisanet.fi>
To: Tom Davies <tomdavies04@yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: "users@global.libreoffice.org" <users@global.libreoffice.org>
Sent: Thursday, 27 September 2012, 18:27
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: MS raised prices so people will now start renting their office products instead
Hi Tom,
Thank you for a very informative answer - it is bad that all this
is not mentioned as a basic info about LibO.
I am prepared to trust it as true but honestly I have to rely on
my own experiences both regarding Win/MSO and LibO.
I have been using Windows and many of MS programs since early
1980: all of the modules in the MSO suite, Access, Publisher,
Visio, Project, etc
never any problems with installing
never need to send any kind of bug reports
never any need to contact any community/list for help
cannot remember not one machine crash when using
Windows-MS-programs
no courses, no teachers in using Windows/MS programs
-- I had no problems to learn all by my self mostly thanks to a
good help function; when I was working as IT-help/help desk I
could even tutor my colleagues in Word, Excel, PP, Access how to
use the special features and functions
made a lot of Access-dbs, learned to complete them
with VBA and got macros work
Some facts about LibO (first 3.4.5, then 3.4.6 -- I didn't dare to install later versions, so now back to OO)
in January this year after downloading LibO I had big
problems/crashes with getting Base ("similar" to MSAccess) working
- reason: JRE and bad guidings
some basic features/functions in Base does not work --
no help from "LibO help" nor "Base Guide"
I have some rather big (heavy) applications in Calc
(several sheets, 200 rows&15-30 cols/sheet, remote references
between sheets) - I've noticed (when tracking why results are
wrong) that Calc in some situations does not have "power" enough
to do the automatic recalc through all the rows/cols/pages: there
is nothing wrong, it just does not do the recalc -- which means
that I cannot trust the calcs to be 100% correct; this is not
only inconvenient but can be fatal in economical calcs (my
computers do most certainly have all the power needed)
the button "LibreOffice Help" does not directly lead
to any kind of help -- the function is totally of no use until you
first learn it's logic (if any) -- to find any help can take hours
of digging
I should very much like to use LibO only (not only because of
costs) but cannot afford wasting time and nerves on all the
problems.
According to this list there are -- in my opinion -- too many
others having problems already from the very beginning, with
installing.
For me -- I represent the ordinary non-LibO-expert user -- it is
obvious why not only companies rely on Windows/MSO.
I can not see that this is anything to argue about: LibO must be
easy-to-use, stable and free from any basic problems if it wants
to be really accepted.
Note: I am talking about ordinary people and ordinary companies,
who value their time.
Pertti Rönnberg
Hi
On the contrary. MS do not fix their problems quickly at all.
Even known malware threats remain for months and even years.
Their strategy is to blame the users. A typical one being to
tell users they shouldn't be using macros because of the
likelihood of getting an infected or corrupted one. Read "The
Emperor’s New Clothes". People are told that MS Office is the
best and so when they find problems with it they tend to blame
themselves rather than the software.
For example when using non-MS software someone would quite
happily slate the product with this sort of thing "I opened my
document and deleted tons of stuff and saved it using the same
name. now when i open the document it has all that stuff
missing! The stupid program can't even find the stuff that i
deleted. No, of course i don't have a back-up of the file
before my deletions"
One problem that has never been solved is that when creating an
MS document the style keeps randomly changing without the user
doing anything noticeable. So, the language keeps switching to
US. Bullet-points and numbering styles keep changing. So in a
bulleted list the points keep changing shape, size and amount
they are indented by. Numbered lists may well miss a few
numbers or repeat a few or suddenly change from i), ii) to c),
d) or other weirdness.
People have learned to accept all this shoddiness from Word
because it happens to so many people. Really advanced users
have learned to re-impose formatting after completing a document
or just accept it.
Spelling has gone out the window not just because of the MTV
generation but also because MS's spell-checker keeps switching
languages back into American (US) so things that are correct are
sometimes given a red-wriggle and sometimes blatantly incorrect
spellings are not found.
LibreOffice tends to stick to the same style throughout, unless
the user has deliberately changed styles and is aware of having
done so. So, bullet-points line-up and retain the same size.
Likewise with numbered lists.
Another problem is the way Word can't handle images with much
sophistication. MS produce a different product for people to
buy. Publisher. Most of the functionality of publisher
wouldn't be needed if Word wasn't such a Pos. Writer handles
most things that Publisher does with more elegance and
sophistication.
Another problem is the limited choices when exporting to Pdf. I
often get posters and stuff from Word users that probably looked
quite good at their end but the jpg compression has made a mad
swirly mess of it. LibreOffice allows you to set the type of
compression and even allows people to create uncompressed Pdfs.
Pdfs can be created with various levels of integration with
screen-readers for blind-users. MS Word has limited options.
So, LO already is a far better product in many, many ways but
people have learned to accept problems with MS stuff and are
even happy when their machine is heavily infected with malware
that results from using MS junk.
Just my opinion and doubtless many people, especially the BoD
disagree.
Regards from
Tom
________________________________
From: Pertti Rönnberg <ptjr@elisanet.fi>
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Sent: Thursday, 27 September 2012, 14:04
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: MS raised prices so people will now start renting their office products instead
All the best LibO folks,
This discussion about calendars etc. may be interesting
perhaps also useful -- but back to the basic question!
Microsoft is going to change their behavior.
Let us remember that MS is the absolute market leader --
they can't be totally wrong when having 95% and people
accept paying.
It is no use blaming MS for success -- it is only waste
of energy and expresses your foolishness. LibO only
have to accept it.
Whether you like it or not MS's programs use to work
without remarkable problems - and if such happens MS
fixes them rather quickly.
That is why people and especially companies seem to be
prepaired to pay what ever the cost.
What I have tried to say is that if LibO wants to get a
reasonable share oh this cake -- free of charge or not
-- then LibO must offer and also deliver something
better than the MS's Office suit it's Access included --
equal is far away from enough.
Some of you said that ordinary users -- and even more
experienced - seldom use more than a 2-5% of the LibO's
(MSO's) features.
Why not then identify the 30% of all most used features
and make sure that at least these work properly -- Base
included.
If LibO cannot be made at least as stable, free of bugs
and easy to use -- and especially it's help function
understandable for every new user -- then there is no
larger future for LibO except for a small group of
idealists and enthusiasts in their own little
kindergarten.
I see this as a question of defining priorities - and a
strategy.
If the goal seems clear and clever then then the
resources will at least not disappear.
Pertti Rönnberg
I have seen listings on Mozilla's archive
system for an extension to help with the syncing to a
Google account.
Don't need any of those for Google Calendar - you
can use Caldav which doesn't require any extension at
all.
http://support.google.com/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99358#sunbird
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