I recently downloaded Calligra out of curiosity of the supposedly innovative interface and seamless integration with the rest of KDE. Although Calligra did deliver on both those aspects, almost every single document I've opened with either Calligra Words or Calligra Tables which has been a doc(x) or xls(x) respectively has failed to render the document properly. Most often entire sections would be missing or misplaced, or formatted wrongly. Libreoffice gives a much more satisfactory effort.

Am I missing anything or is Calligra's MS document support known to be ... well, bad?

Can't be said without looking at those documents. Might as well be that some feature in your documents isn't supported. It also makes a big difference if you tested doc or docx files, the newer formats are usually better supported.

I work with .doc .docx Libreoffice and Calligra Words daily.
My experience is that both apps do roughly equally well for opening .doc / .docx files. Libreoffice does better with fancy images / formatting in headers. Words does better with imagewrap and positioning in general. One of the beautiful things about Calligra is the live updating of text flow around images and objects as you move them. The real downside is that (unlike libre office) Calligra can't *save* to .doc / .docx.

In general, I use Calligra when a document is just for me or I can get away with giving a .odt or .pdf to the other person. If I need to give someone a .doc or .docx I use LibreOffice. Unfortunately, Calligra and LibreOffice seem to disagree on how specific .odt files should look, so choose your word processor well at the start. I've had many heart aches from trying to create odt's with either app and then open them with the other.

Without the ability to save in microsoft office compatible format, the Calligra suite is useless in cases when collaboration with other people who use ms. office is involved.

pazuzuthewise wrote:Without the ability to save in microsoft office compatible format, the Calligra suite is useless in cases when collaboration with other people who use ms. office is involved.

MS Office can read ODF files.