I have always thought OpenOffice was a great tool to use – but have been continually frustrated at it saving in the open office format by default, so after some searching and tinkering I found a way to make all the openoffice applications default save into their microsoft equivilent. The best resource I found was here, but to summarize it simply:

1) Open up one of the OpenOffice programs (i.e. Writer)

2)Go to Tools and then Options

3) Under the Load/Save section – expand it and click on general

4)In the section titled Default File Format there is a section called Automatically save as and you just want to select ‘Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP’.

For me – those simple instructions put OpenOffice as a more serious contender for those who do not understand file types!!