Alternatives to Microsoft office

[Acyclo]

LibreOffice user.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

I hated Open Office - it was horribly buggy and clunky.

If you're employed by a reasonably large organisation who uses MS Office they ought to be able to negotiate a very cheap deal - I've got two installations of the latest version of MS Office Pro (more up-to-date than the one the office systems were upgraded to last year) for about a tenner.

Same here, actually. I got MS Office 2013 (for use on my home PC) for about that price, through my employer.

 

[Ron-da-Valli]

Another vote here for Open Office.

 

[Sea of vapours]

I hated Open Office - it was horribly buggy and clunky.

If you're employed by a reasonably large organisation who uses MS Office they ought to be able to negotiate a very cheap deal - I've got two installations of the latest version of MS Office Pro (more up-to-date than the one the office systems were upgraded to last year) for about a tenner.

It used to be [buggy and clunky]. It's not any longer, at least not in my opinion. I have the latest version of MS Office suite and choose to use OpenOffice most of the time

 

[Piemaster]

Open Office here too.
Depends what you want it for. With MS Office I doubt I've ever used more than 20% of what it's actually capable of doing.
Did a one day Excel course a couple of years ago in which one of the company accounts found out things he never knew about it.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

I use google docs through google drive, works for me.

 

[IDMark2]

I use LibreOffice for anything I need to do but just yesterday was sent a form in docx format by my daughters school and on opening it in Libre Word it was a mess...
Opened it in Google Docs instead and everything was as it should have been. I'll still use LibreOffice for my own use but there still seem to be issues with accurately importing complicated formatting from other types of office files.

 

[User482]

It used to be [buggy and clunky]. It's not any longer, at least not in my opinion. I have the latest version of MS Office suite and choose to use OpenOffice most of the time

I have both at work. MS Office is approximately one million times better. Open Office is slower to open, less stable, and is not fully compatible, despite their claims.

 

[craigwend]

It's an old article but supports ^^^^^

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/free-office-software

 

[Over The Hill]

Thanks for the responses guys. That gives me some confidence to try one of the alternatives rather than pay out really due to fear of the unknown.

The three formats are basically unchanged from the days of Windows 95 so it seems a bit daft to have to pay lots of money for what is a very simple set of programs. I guess it just seems a bit much to pay lots of money for them re-selling the same thing to me.

 

[mustang1]

Yup - as above ----- OpenOffice; or the very similar http://www.libreoffice.org/ (I think they had an argument over whose turn it was to make the coffee one day).

Yeah I think they had a spat with oracle because of some licensing issue so it was forked to create libre. Not sure if oracle anticipated that or maybe they don't even care.

 

[Doseone]

I've just bought new laptops for the kids, both Windows 8.1.

I put an old copy of Office 2003 on both, works perfectly. Do a custom install and don't install Outlook.

 

[Over The Hill]

I've just bought new laptops for the kids, both Windows 8.1.

I put an old copy of Office 2003 on both, works perfectly. Do a custom install and don't install Outlook.

Does it cope with the later change in file formats? I think it was all the same but then just had docx instead of doc on it.

Newer version seems to be no better but just takes longer to open!!

 

[Doseone]

Does it cope with the later change in file formats? I think it was all the same but then just had docx instead of doc on it.

Newer version seems to be no better but just takes longer to open!!

No, but you just download the docx reader from Microsoft and then it does.

 

[swee'pea99]

Spoil yourself: spend £75 on a super-powered desktop complete with Windows XP and a full suite of Office 2007. Ebay is your friend!