Is it possible to do the Navision 5.0 export to Word/Excel to OpenOffice.org?

Question

Navision 5.0 includes a feature to export to Word or Excel. Is it possible to make this work with OpenOffice.org Writer or Calc instead? If so, what has to be done to set it up?

I have been told by my Navision reseller that the feature works best with Office 2007, and export to Excel 2003 works. No mention of Office 2000 (which is what we mostly have installed currently) or OpenOffice.org. I'm hoping to be able to standardise on OpenOffice.org across the company when 3.0 is released, to avoid the expense of upgrading everyone to Microsoft Office 2007.

Answer 1

You should be able to export the documents to word or excel and then use OpenOffice to open the documents. No additional set up required.

Answer 2

In order to export from Navision, you will need to have Microsoft Excel 2003 or 2007 installed on the machine (because export process is using automation calling Excel). However, after that, you definitely can open exported files using Open Office.

But, you cannot export to OpenOffice directly. At least, not without customizations.

Answer 3

I know this is an old question, but I'll add the answer just in case anyone comes here:

You can export directly to OpenOffice without customizations. The only thing you need is to go into Tools > Manage Style Sheets... and modify the existing StyleSheets so that they open OpenCalc and OpenWrite instead of Excel and Word.

Note: it's been a while since I last configured it, but I seem to remember that you might need to export and reimport the stylesheets to change the associated program.

It's quite easy, and you can actually keep both options (Export to Excel/Export to OpenCalc) so that users who need MS Office can use Excel, while the rest use OpenCalc.

This answer applies to the functionality to export to Word and Excel in Dynamics Nav 5.0 and Nav 5.0SP1. I haven't tried it in Dynamics Nav 2009 (Role Tailored Client).