oreouk: Advice

Lissa (

oreouk) wrote,
@ 2008-02-21 15:49:00

Current location:

working from home

Advice
My new computer comes without such things as Word and Excel - what's out there and free and works with Windows that I can install and use? Will those be able to open Word and Excel files?

Thanks!

Customize

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	rinioth 2008-02-21 03:55 pm UTC (link)
	Open Office It can certainly read Word files (and even write them) It can also read Excel Spreadsheets, but, it's not very good at ones with macros and other Visual Basic Foo in them. http://www.openoffice.org/ It's free of course. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	oreouk 2008-02-21 03:58 pm UTC (link)
	Thank you. All my Excel files are simple ones so that shouldn't be a problem. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

armb
2008-02-21 05:16 pm UTC (link)

Word support isn't perfect either. There are (fairly) good reasons why MS Office file formats are a bastard to fully understand, and until recently a lot of it had to be reversed engineered without specs, so it's amazing that it does as good a job as it does.
When I got a new desktop machine at work, I thought I'd try just using OO. The first Word document someone sent me was unreadable, so I went off to get the Office install CD.
But for a lot of stuff it works fine.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	oreouk 2008-02-21 09:50 pm UTC (link)
	Is it mainly complicated Word documents with wizzy formatting it has problems with? Most of the ones I have don't have that so I might be OK. Shows why it would be bad for my office though! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

armb
2008-02-22 10:05 pm UTC (link)

In my case it was something with a big "DRAFT" on every page that was supposed to be a light grey watermark in the background, but came out as white opaque on top of the writing. With straightforward documents it will probably be okay, though http://crazyscot.livejournal.com/243108.html describes a problem with an "uncomplicated" document.

Then again, it's not as if Word never has problems opening documents created by a different version of Word (or even, occasionally, itself).

Microsoft do do a free (non-pay, not open source) Word viewer, which is sometimes useful if you just want to read documents on a Windows machine which doesn't have Word and don't need to edit.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	oreouk 2008-02-22 11:01 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks I'll bear that in mind for if I have problems (Reply to this)(Parent)

	bardling 2008-02-21 05:56 pm UTC (link)
	We have gone completely to using OpenOffice at work, too, and converted all our internal documents to it from originally being word docs/xls - not much in the way of problems at all. A little getting used to it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

keristor
2008-02-21 04:27 pm UTC (link)

Actually the spreadsheet is fine with ordinary macros, and even handles a lot of the VB stuff these days. The only things I've had trouble with in the recent versions is going the other way (saving as Word format) when I put OO features into a spreadsheet (a graph), it managed to save it as something which it couldn't open again. My car mileage, timesheet and energy consumption spreadsheets have macros and are saved as Excel format (and have been viewed and edited using Excel at work) with no problems.

The only trouble it has sometimes with Word documents is with the fonts, but that shouldn't be any problem on a Windows machine because that will have all of the fonts anyway. It can be a hassle on *ix machines without the proprietary fonts installed.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	oreouk 2008-02-21 09:52 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks - that's handy information. My most common document that I need to port between here and the office is documents and spreadsheets relating to conventions - PRs, Filk Fund accounts and the like. But we have the right to install Word etc - we just can't find the CD at the moment. I'm interested in seeing how I get along without it though. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mbumby 2008-02-21 04:24 pm UTC (link)
	I have installed Open Office on my laptop. It's a LOT better than it was the last time I looked at it (5 years ago?). Don't know if it'll work with the 2007 word/excel files -- but it should work with anything created in Office 2003 or before. (With the possible exception of ... was it Excel 2 that they decided was an abomination and tried to eliminate all reference to?) (Reply to this)(Thread)

	keristor 2008-02-21 04:29 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, OO version 1.x was awful. I couldn't even get the spreadsheet to print in landscape mode (I eventually gave up and wrote raw PostScript to do what I wanted!). Version 2 is several orders of magnitude better... (Reply to this)(Parent)

	bardling 2008-02-21 05:57 pm UTC (link)
	It does work fine with 2007 word/exel, we're using it at work now. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bardling 2008-02-21 06:00 pm UTC (link)
	Sorry, no, my bad - it works fine with Office 97/2000/XP. Don't think it does with Word/Exel 2007, if that's the latest version, haven't used that myself. (Reply to this)(Parent)

stevieannie
2008-02-21 04:34 pm UTC (link)

I've got a legal copy of Office 2007 (came free as a "sorry your first laptop was rubbish" compensation from PC World), and frankly, I won't bother again - Openoffice does everything in the good old fashioned way of Word/Excel, but the *new* Word 2007 is sufficiently different that I had to learn it all over again, and I don't think it was an improvement.

Definitely Open Office.

And if you're having a browse, try this link for more Open Source stuff than you can shake a stick at...

http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	oreouk 2008-02-21 09:55 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks - I'll have a peek in a bit. One of these days we'll probably convert to Office 2007 at work and then I'll worry about getting used to that and the fun and games of switching between two different systems. Feh. (Reply to this)(Parent)

valydiarosada
2008-02-23 11:20 pm UTC (link)

I too have a copy of Office 2007, and it is completely different from earlier versions. So yes, I'm having to learn it all over again too. I'm persevering with it, on the basis that I will have to use it for work eventually.

What is strange, is that Excel has long been my favourite spreadsheet because it was intuitive and easy to use, more so than other spreadsheets I had used. I can't say that about the 2007 version.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	janewilliams20 2008-02-21 05:16 pm UTC (link)
	I now use OpenOffice at home. Limitations: Won't open Access files The spreadsheet won't do data-to-columns conversion, which I generally use rather a lot. It won't handle Office 2007 files, but then the only place I've ever used that was the month's free trial that came with the laptop. If both were free, I'd take Office. But Office isn't free, so... (Reply to this)

antonia_tiger
2008-02-21 05:34 pm UTC (link)

Open Office is the way to go. And the native file format follows an ISO standard, I hear. Note that it shouldn't be used commercially: you have to get the paid-for version for that. I doubt anyone will bother about the odd file from work, but if home-working were to be a significant use, I reckon your employer should pay. Or at least you should be able to make an income-tax deduction.

(OK, maybe not entirely serious, but since there is a free-to-use substitute for personal use, buying Office is something you onl;y need to do for work, and doesn't that mean something?)

(Reply to this)(Thread)

armb
2008-02-21 06:21 pm UTC (link)

> shouldn't be used commercially: you have to get the paid-for version for that

Where do you get that from? http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-licensing.html#1 has no such requirement.
(Of course if you are making money from it you might consider it only fair to donate some money to the project, but that's another matter. As is whether it is worth paying for the extra features in StarOffice compared with OpenOffice.)

Google Pack includes StarOffice for free by the way, although it's a pay download from Sun. I haven't checked how versions compare.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	antonia_tiger 2008-02-21 07:00 pm UTC (link)
	I'm old enough to be entitled to feel out of date, OK? (Reply to this)(Parent)

oreouk
2008-02-21 09:58 pm UTC (link)

I do work from home one day a week but work give me a computer to do that on and don't like us doing Work's work on home computers. Fair enough. My work laptop is small and light and just what it should be for the use I put it to, and has the benefit that I can bring it home and use it for personal stuff if I want to (but taking it on holiday or to a con with me would be bad).

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	tig_b 2008-02-21 06:58 pm UTC (link)
	I use open office for most stuff at home, but also have the free MS Office viewers for stuff they've messed up too much for any reasonable software to cope with. (Reply to this)

	aryana_filker 2008-02-21 09:41 pm UTC (link)
	I use Open Office, too, and most things go well with it. Some thing better than with Excel. :) I like OO. (Reply to this)

	pola_bear 2008-02-22 12:58 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, Open Office probably the way to go, but google docs can also be good and it saves often automagically and stores things online for you and has support, if you want another option (It's had good support when I've used it). (Reply to this)

	clanwilliam 2008-02-27 10:36 am UTC (link)
	Just noticed you adding me - may I just say that I knew instantly who it was... How's life? And Open Office is excellent - I add my vote for that. (Reply to this)(Thread)

oreouk
2008-02-27 09:41 pm UTC (link)

Hurrah for identifiability :-) Blame Smitty for mentioning you in her earthquake post.

Life is good, though a little hectic with the two of them now. Alex has reached the dizzy heights of 6 and Amy's 2, so it's usually all go here. The coming year could be interesting because Phil's accepted a job in Farnborough and though he told them he'd need quite a bit of flexibility in his working hours to let him take the kids to school at least 2 days a week, it's still clearly going to be a challenge.

Other than that work is the same old, same old and most toher things continue in their normal old vein. Corrupting Alex steadily into Star Wars, of course...

How about with you?

(Reply to this)(Parent)

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