MS Office Substitute?

[Rich_in_Tampa]

Another one I forgot to mention: zoho.com, and online app service, free for individuals and pretty darn impressive.

[OAG]

Originally Posted by toofrugalformycat

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but does anyone know if I could download OpenOffice and still keep my old Ms Office 97 at the same time? I want to do this because DH has written a bunch of macros/Visual Basic routines/reports in Access and Excel that we use every day, and I want to find out if OpenOffice can run them. Or maybe someone here knows if it even tries for that kind of compatibility.

I have used them both at the same time and also with the new Office 2007 in both Win XP and Vista. Just be careful when loading files between the programs. Save your original data files before experimenting on files you can afford to lose.

[ERD50]

Originally Posted by free4now

Did you know that Office is only $130 these days for word and excel? I bought it just because it is easier than dealing with the strange file format conversion issues that occasionally arise with other programs. I've tried openoffice a few times and although it will save in microsoft formats it tends to require vigilance and overriding defaults to make that happen; openoffice wants to save in it's own proprietary formats. Same issue with google documents... it works well if you just want to edit the file online, but if you want to save it to your hard disk there are compatibility and workflow difficulties with saving in microsoft formats.

free4now, I think you have that backwards.

It is Microsoft that is using proprietary formats. The open source apps are using open non-proprietary standards.

OpenDocument - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The OpenDocument format (ODF) is a file format for electronic office documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents.

The OpenDocument standard meets the common definitions of an open standard, meaning the specification is freely available and implementable.

Microsoft Office does not natively support OpenDocument currently.

The OpenDocument format is used in free software and in proprietary software. This includes office suites (both traditional and web-based) and individual applications such as word-processors, spreadsheets, presentation, and data management applications. Prominent office suites supporting OpenDocument include OpenOffice.org, KOffice, Google Docs, NeoOffice, Zoho, IBM Lotus Symphony and Corel WordPerfect Office X4.[16]

-ERD50

[OAG]

Fair amount of information here:why: Why OpenOffice.org

[2good]

To the question from Khan (I can put Excel on more than one computer?)

It depends on the license you bought.
I have an educational license and I am allowed to install on 1 desktop and 1 laptop.

2good

[OAG]

Originally Posted by 2good

To the question from Khan (I can put Excel on more than one computer?)

It depends on the license you bought.
I have an educational license and I am allowed to install on 1 desktop and 1 laptop.

2good

I can confirm that (I have it on a NB and DT). However, when I called MS to reinstall MS Office 2007 (on the second machine) the question was "how many computers will you be installing the program on?" My response was "2" and they went forward and issued a second install ID. Be prepared for a lengthy phone call as the number issuing process can take a bit of time and be sure you have installed the program on the second machine and call while at that machine as they will issue the ID while you are sitting there and you can enter the ID while on the phone.