The Challenge - Part 1

Ok, I've been thinking about this for days now, actually, I've toyed with it years, but I've been seriously thinking about it this time around for days. No more thinking, time to take action.

The challenge: switch from using MS Office Word to Open Office Writer.
The fear: oh dear god, there are so many!

• I am a power user in Word, and have been for years. I don't so much use VB to simplify things like I used to, but I am completely at home in Word and am confident I can make it do whatever I need it to, and I tend to ask more of it than the average user.
  
• I love efficiency & I love, no, EXPECT logical, intuitive interaction with technology - now admittedly, what I'm calling intuitive, may simply be more about familiarity in this instance - I'm now simply too familiar with Word to be able to judge if it is in fact intuitive or not.
• I have used Open Office Writer and so far, my experiences have ended in frustration, disillusion and a sigh of relief as I have returned to using Word. (Not to mention getting seriously agro with Open Office apps randomly crashing in the middle of operation.)

The motivation:

• I work for a company that is passionate about Open Standards, (which I get) and Open Source - which I kinda get, but not as much as I want to. (I confessed all of this to my manager the other day and did seriously wonder if I was severely impacting my future career options! He responded with a comprehensive reading list - which I'm working through (in fact, I just stopped reading "The Cathedral & The Bizarre" to write this.))
• I don't do things by halves. I'm not comfortable with being passionate about the company I work for, but not being fully on board, or at least not fully understanding, the things that my employer is passionate about.
• I'm not a programmer (although I did learn to be one), and I'm no longer a hands on tech (and haven't been for years) but I am technically savvy, and most importantly, I am passionate about 'Invisible Technology' - ie - a user should NOT have to think about using technology, they should just be able to do the things they need to do. Full stop. (I need to write a more detailed entry on this as it will take more than a couple of sentences, but you'll have to wait for that one! Suffice to say - ease of user experience is high on my list of priorities).
• Other than email, a word processor is probably the most common office tool people use in a work environment, or at the very least, it's right up there. (ok, I'm also not quite ready to let go of my Excel comfort zone - yep, power user there too, but one step at a time!).

3 keys to success

Without thinking about it too hard, I can think of 3 things that I am going to have to get comfortable & confident with in Writer to consider my switch a success.

(Oh - important point - this HAS to be a success, I am not even considering failure as an option - I am confident that I can become as confident & at home in Writer as I am in Word and can hopefully contribute some helpful suggestions for others making the switch as I go)

• Beat outline numbering into submission - this is a challenge that has caused me to give up this quest in the path - despite reading multiple articles and spending some considerable time, I have never managed to fathom the logic in Writer's particluar implementation of Outline numbering (and maybe I'll read back on this and wonder what sort of dunce I was in the past to have not got it, but there it is for now).
• Fields - I use fields extensively in Word documents - especially for monthly reports & contracts where the same name, term, number, word etc. needs to appear in multiple places throughout the document (including in headers and footers). And yes, this is another thing that I have so far failed to master in OO Writer.
• Interoperability - and yes, I appreciate this one could be a big ask. I will have a need to copy graphs from Excel into Writer. I'm not the only one (I tend to be the go-to person for all desktop apps). If I have to go via OO Calc, so be it, but I need to be able to do this and have the graph turn up in Writer looking professional and not mangled - which has been my experience to date, and also my observed experience where I am receiving Writer docos from other people needing to do this.

Technical bits
Version of MS Office Word: 2003, SP3
Version of OO Writer I have currently installed: (waiting for it to open................) (can you see I'm really very apprehensive about this??? :) Rest assured, I am committed (and am still waiting)) There it is! 3.0.1
OS I'm Using: Windows XP Pro, versio 2002, SP3

So there it is. I'll update as my journey progresses.