Disgusted with myself - finally bought Word

[Mr McC]

I have sold out: a favour to a friend forced me to finally buy Office 2010 - €100 euros on offer - to enable me to work from home. Up to this point Abiword had proved sufficient - all I really need is a word processor. Well, it does look the part, but when I opened the file for a final review in Office 2003 this morning, I was horrified to find that all the words had merged into long uber-words without spaces that only native German speakers might have had a chance of deciphering. I'm sure that this is attributable to user error, a simple "save as" option somewhere within the beautiful new tool bar, but market strategies aside, there was seriously no need for that, early in the morning, prior to coffee, only saying - end rant.

[Easy Rhino]

abiword has always given me problems. why no libreoffice?

[WhiteLotus]

No idea how old you are, but if you are eligible, get the student versions of Office. You get Word, Powerpoint, Excel, OneNote, Access, InfoPath (??), Publisher, and Outlook. All for around £40

[Mr McC]

Originally Posted by Easy Rhino

abiword has always given me problems. why no libreoffice?

I was never totally happy with Abiword, either, but I give it 7/10 for effort. I was going to download libreoffice and give it a try, but it's a bit late now circimstances overtook me - a DocX with a bit of formatting and no time to spare...

Thanks for the suggestion anyway, I'd certainly tell all and sundry to download libreoffice rather than paying for Office.

Originally Posted by WhiteLotus

No idea how old you are, but if you are eligible, get the student versions of Office. You get Word, Powerpoint, Excel, OneNote, Access, InfoPath (??), Publisher, and Outlook. All for around £40

My student days are long over: I'm thirty-eight

[Bundy]

Love it or hate it, if you have to do some serious amounts of professional work, Office is the best option.

Even if only for home use it can be useful, I have 1 PC here with office on it and it is constantly in use by the kids (and neighbours kids) doing school assignments on it.

[Jstn7477]

I used OpenOffice for a while during college and got points taken off some of my papers when I sent the instructors the .doc, because it did weird stuff like change the font throughout the paper, made the spacing screwed up, etc. when it was viewed on the real Office. Sometimes, you just have to have the real deal for some things, e.g. MS Office for professional data entry stuff.

[copenhagen69]

open office is what I have always used ...

[Maelstrom]

Yeah I've had to use office for college. Luckily its cheap there. Never had any hate for it, but openoffice and the likes are nice for when you don't want to spend money xD

[Mr McC]

Originally Posted by Bundy

Love it or hate it, if you have to do some serious amounts of professional work, Office is the best option.

Even if only for home use it can be useful, I have 1 PC here with office on it and it is constantly in use by the kids (and neighbours kids) doing school assignments on it.

Yeah, I know, you're right, but I had this nice home/work dichotomy thing going on and home was Office free. Well that's all shot to hell as well

It is the most aesthetically pleasing, but that bloody forced backwards incompatibility got to me this morning, not in the way programmed obsolescence, or its digital equivalent, gets to me (I hear there are fridges from the 60's still going strong) on a general level: no, it was a personal thing between me and Bill this morning when I opened that doc. Makes me feel more justified for holding out so long, but it's over now and I'm sure I'll like it once I can find my way around it.

[qubit]

What you're using MS Office?!! You should be keeping yourself pure with OpenOffice. Flog yourself in public 10 times as punishment!

But seriously, I've been able to try out all the versions over the years and the one I like best is Office 2003. This because it's the last version not to have that damned ribbon, has lots of good features, works well and the interface looks nice, especially in Outlook.

In the end, one often has to use a mainstream product, even if they'd rather not, simply because of compatibility requirements, so don't be too hard on yourself over it. Don't be 'disgusted' with yourself, dude.

[Mr McC]

Originally Posted by qubit

What you're using MS Office?!! You should be keeping yourself pure with OpenOffice. Flog yourself in public 10 times as punishment!

No, man, ain't you heard? Openoffice has been infiltrated by the enemy

[toastem2004]

I haven't had to use MS Office in a long time. Last one i used was office '97, after that it was all WordPerfect. The latest version X5, is amazing. Only ran me $20 usd. Has a MS Word mode similar to 2003, native PDF save & edit, and if ur really old school, still has Wordperfect 5.1 Layout option as well.

[Benetanegia]

Originally Posted by Mr McC

No, man, ain't you heard? Openoffice has been infiltrated by the enemy

Change to LibreOffice! Now.

Hehe, I don't know if it's funny or is sad, but the truth is that I changed to LibreOffice as soon as it was infiltrated by the enemy. It is silly, but just in case.

Anyway, so the thing is that open source programs can open word documents without any problem but the opposite is not posible? I've been using OpenOffice for a long time, but never for anything important, just family and friends, but tbh I never actually cared if the other end could see what I sent. No complaints though, ever.

[HalfAHertz]

I work in a college environment and am a valiant defender of Libre/OpenOffice. If you ask me Word is an over-coded over-designed piece of garbage with a terrible and very inefficient ribbon UI. However as much as I don't want to admit it the free solutions have a lot of limitations, compatibility being the greatest but you get what you paid for . So whenever I have to hand in something, I just save it as PDF (which is supported internally) and forget about worrying about formatting errors...

I'd personally download LibreOffice, fence the office 2010 license and invest the money into my beer fund

Edit: also google docs has decent .docx support. Sometimes if a word file is giving me a lot of headaches in Libre, I run it through google first and that usually solves it.

[qubit]

Ok, so what's all this OpenOffice being infiltrated by the enemy then? Sounds like I've missed out on some news here.

[Jstn7477]

Originally Posted by qubit

Ok, so what's all this OpenOffice being infiltrated by the enemy then? Sounds like I've missed out on some news here.

Sun got PWN'd by Oracle.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by Jstn7477

Sun got PWN'd by Oracle.

Oh yeah, that was it.

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you could have gotten a Technet account with Microsoft and gotten license keys to all of their products - including the full MS Office suite with Access. Some products like Visual Studio aren't included, but pretty much every end-user product and every operating system is.

The cost for the basic US subscription is $150. The pro (or whatever they call it) subscription is $250/year. The activation keys remain valid even after your subscription expires IIRC, but if you want to check, we have a Technet thread here on TPU.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/sh...hlight=technet

edit: supposedly technet activation codes are only supposed to be used for evaluation purposes, but I've never heard of MS busting anyone's chops over it. I think it's an unwritten understanding that if you know enough to even know about the program, they don't really care if it's for evaluation or personal use. Just don't quote me on that. However if you start selling activation keys or pirated software I suspect they would come down on you pretty hard.

[RejZoR]

I'm using OpenOffice for what i need Office programs. I used to use MS Office from khm alternate sources but i found out it's pointless as i don't need it at all. OpenOffice works just fine for my needs.

[erixx]

Looks like all this ranting is only because you were unable to forsee that OF2010 saves in docx but OF2003 in doc format? HAHA!

BTW, there is a free patch on MS site for the old Office versions to be able to open the new formats... Install it once and forget.

[Frick]

Originally Posted by erixx

Looks like all this ranting is only because you were unable to forsee that OF2010 saves in docx but OF2003 in doc format? HAHA!

BTW, there is a free patch on MS site for the old Office versions to be able to open the new formats... Install it once and forget.

Was going to say this. Linky.

With that said, 2010 is pretty nice as well. I assume it's Home & Student? You can use those on three computers you know, so you can buy one copy and share it with friend/family.

But for the basic need Libre/Openoffice is just fine. When you move to larger spreadsheets with complex macros and Exchange you might want MS Office though.

[Mr McC]

Originally Posted by erixx

Looks like all this ranting is only because you were unable to forsee that OF2010 saves in docx but OF2003 in doc format? HAHA!

BTW, there is a free patch on MS site for the old Office versions to be able to open the new formats... Install it once and forget.

Undoubtedly, I stated as much in the original post, but time was against me and I don't know what the DocX format brings to documents that can't be achieved in the Doc format, but again, that could be my ignorance. I simply don't see the advantage of it, other than promoting sales: if the client uses DocX, you're better off using DocX to ensure no formatting errors during any conversion processes.

Originally Posted by Frick

Was going to say this. Linky.

With that said, 2010 is pretty nice as well. I assume it's Home & Student? You can use those on three computers you know, so you can buy one copy and share it with friend/family.

But for the basic need Libre/Openoffice is just fine. When you move to larger spreadsheets with complex macros and Exchange you might want MS Office though.

Yeah, Home and Student.

Originally Posted by twilyth

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you could have gotten a Technet account with Microsoft and gotten license keys to all of their products - including the full MS Office suite with Access. Some products like Visual Studio aren't included, but pretty much every end-user product and every operating system is.

I actually had no knowledge of Technet, but I know people who acquired keys intended for use in corporations, do these people simply buy in bulk and then sell on the to end client at a cheaper rate? Are there any limitations on the support you receive?

Unfortunately, as I stated, time and circumstances were not on my side and buying Office was the safest and quickest bet, but I appreciate the suggestions and hopefully they will help anyone else who faces a similar problem or simply wants to save some money.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by Mr McC

Undoubtedly, I stated as much in the original post, but time was against me and I don't know what the DocX format brings to documents that can't be achieved in the Doc format, but again, that could be my ignorance. I simply don't see the advantage of it, other than promoting sales: if the client uses DocX, you're better off using DocX to ensure no formatting errors during any conversion processes.

You've answered your own question there. The newer formats do bring new err, formatting options to all Office documents and yes, you're right in wanting to be able to use them natively, as screwed up formatting can really mess up a document, sometimes very subtly and others significantly.

An example: I was sent a spreadsheet in Office 2007 format from a colleague at work. Now, my workplace still standardizes on Office 2003 and we use the format converter plugin with it. However, this spreadsheet had the cells formatted with a shaded background, which the older Excel doesn't support. Result? You get a solid colour with the contents barely legible. The cells looks fine in Excel 2007. I had to ask them to remove the shaded format to restore legibility.

[Rado D]

Originally Posted by WhiteLotus

No idea how old you are, but if you are eligible, get the student versions of Office. You get Word, Powerpoint, Excel, OneNote, Access, InfoPath (??), Publisher, and Outlook. All for around £40

Hang on,if Im not a student or in the age group anymore,then I cant purchase MS Office student edition?I thought Student edition only stands for a stripped off version of the higher priced versions..of course I know you cant use student version for business purposes and such..but I didnt know you cant just buy yourself MS Student

[Mr McC]

Originally Posted by Rado D

Hang on,if Im not a student or in the age group anymore,then I cant purchase MS Office student edition?I thought Student edition only stands for a stripped off version of the higher priced versions..of course I know you cant use student version for business purposes and such..but I didnt know you cant just buy yourself MS Student

You can buy whatever you want, I can assure that Microsoft places no obstacles to the process of separating you from your money; however, if you are no longer a student in a certain age group, you don't qualify for the discount.