Faq/General/028

What are the functional differences between Word and Writer?

 * Styles
 * Word has only paragraph and character styles.
 * Writer has page style that can manage very flexibly changes in the layout. Word uses section break for this. Writer also has the section break but it is used to protect a part of a document, or change the number of columns on a portion of a page
 * Writer also has frame style (to manage the automatic formatting and consistency for equations, images, etc..), as well as bullet style
 * Viewing of the document
 * Word has five ways to view a document: Normal (not taking into account the margins), Web (no height limit page), Page (viewing page boundaries), Reading (mirrored page) Plan.
 * Writer has a Hide Whitespace mode. The outline does not exist per se. It is replaced by the Navigator that allows (among other things) to view and modify the organization of the plan (order and hierarchy), but can not change the title text. However, the Navigator allows you to browse not only between the different chapters, but also between the tables, images, equations, etc..
 * Usability
 * Recent versions of Word have messed up the organization of the interface, making it quite confusing
 * Some commands are located at very different entries between applications menu
 * for Word, against for Writer
 * for Word, against for Writer
 * Drawing tool
 * Drawing tool built into Word is better than Writer
 * Writer compensates with the Draw module that is much more powerful (3D drawing, connectors, etc.).
 * PDF
 * The latest versions of Word can create a PDF document from the document when Writer can do it from the beginning
 * Importing PDF can be done in LibreOffice, but not in Word

 'For more information', you can refer:
 * Feature Comparison