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I just wondered if there are any Office products/suites worth
considering besides what Microsoft offer? Either free or paid but
lower cost than Microsoft Office, but that allow compatibility with
older Office files e.g. Word.doc and Excel.xls files etc? Or is
Microsoft Office really the only decent product option to choose?

I have been taking a look at just the basic Office Home and Student
version with Word, Excel, OneNote and PP. I've not seen, used or heard
of the OneNote product previously but it looks like it could be very
useful for me.

There's no outlook but I guess that's not a problem because I mostly
use web based emails anyway and my isp account I can always just use
thunderbird or something else for that as Outlook Express no longer
seems to come with Windows 7. I don't really use Access that much and
I have an older version I can always instal if I ever need to.

Thanks,

John

In article <b33a45b9-d013-4073-a1a3-
s.com>, John <> scribeth thus
>I just wondered if there are any Office products/suites worth
>considering besides what Microsoft offer? Either free or paid but
>lower cost than Microsoft Office, but that allow compatibility with
>older Office files e.g. Word.doc and Excel.xls files etc? Or is
>Microsoft Office really the only decent product option to choose?
>
>I have been taking a look at just the basic Office Home and Student
>version with Word, Excel, OneNote and PP. I've not seen, used or heard
>of the OneNote product previously but it looks like it could be very
>useful for me.
>
>There's no outlook but I guess that's not a problem because I mostly
>use web based emails anyway and my isp account I can always just use
>thunderbird or something else for that as Outlook Express no longer
>seems to come with Windows 7. I don't really use Access that much and
>I have an older version I can always instal if I ever need to.
>
>Thanks,
>
>John


Tried either Open office or Libre office?...
--
Tony Sayer

tony sayer wrote:
> In article <b33a45b9-d013-4073-a1a3-
> s.com>, John <> scribeth thus
>> I just wondered if there are any Office products/suites worth
>> considering besides what Microsoft offer? Either free or paid but
>> lower cost than Microsoft Office, but that allow compatibility with
>> older Office files e.g. Word.doc and Excel.xls files etc? Or is
>> Microsoft Office really the only decent product option to choose?
>>
>> I have been taking a look at just the basic Office Home and Student
>> version with Word, Excel, OneNote and PP. I've not seen, used or heard
>> of the OneNote product previously but it looks like it could be very
>> useful for me.
>>
>> There's no outlook but I guess that's not a problem because I mostly
>> use web based emails anyway and my isp account I can always just use
>> thunderbird or something else for that as Outlook Express no longer
>> seems to come with Windows 7. I don't really use Access that much and
>> I have an older version I can always instal if I ever need to.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> John
>
>
> Tried either Open office or Libre office?...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libre_office

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_office_suites

"Perfect compatibility" on office suites, is hard to find, even if you
stick with only Microsoft products.

If you need to "view" old documents, Microsoft offers free viewer applications
so you can read documents given to you by other Microsoft users. That's
about as much as I need here, for the odd document I might need to look at
(like a user manual in .doc format). I have some version of Word Viewer, and
a translator pack to convert newer docs into a format that Word Viewer uses.
As tools like that move forward, they tend to lose the ability to view
ancient docs.

Paul

"John" <> wrote in message
news:b33a45b9-d013-4073-a1a3-...
>I just wondered if there are any Office products/suites worth
> considering besides what Microsoft offer? Either free or paid but
> lower cost than Microsoft Office, but that allow compatibility with
> older Office files e.g. Word.doc and Excel.xls files etc? Or is
> Microsoft Office really the only decent product option to choose?
>
> I have been taking a look at just the basic Office Home and Student
> version with Word, Excel, OneNote and PP. I've not seen, used or heard
> of the OneNote product previously but it looks like it could be very
> useful for me.
>
> There's no outlook but I guess that's not a problem because I mostly
> use web based emails anyway and my isp account I can always just use
> thunderbird or something else for that as Outlook Express no longer
> seems to come with Windows 7. I don't really use Access that much and
> I have an older version I can always instal if I ever need to.
>
> Thanks,
>
> John

You should look at OpenOffice. It has a presentation that very closely
matches MSOffice, and it claims to be fully compatible with MSoft.
Basically, if you already know MSOffice, then the learning curve will be
very short and you can open your existing files as well as share files with
MSoft Office users.

You do not get Outlook Express with Win7, as you have discovered, but you
can get Windows Live Mail, or some such product, for free.

As for installing the older version of Access, or any other database
application for that matter, you may find that it is not compatible with
Win7, and almost certainly not compatible with any version of Office that is
compatible with Win7.

I think your best option is to look at OpenOffice. It's free, and the source
code allows developers to create tools that work like macros to do
repetitive tasks for you.

John embroidered on the monitor :
> I just wondered if there are any Office products/suites worth
> considering besides what Microsoft offer? Either free or paid but
> lower cost than Microsoft Office, but that allow compatibility with
> older Office files e.g. Word.doc and Excel.xls files etc? Or is
> Microsoft Office really the only decent product option to choose?
>
> I have been taking a look at just the basic Office Home and Student
> version with Word, Excel, OneNote and PP. I've not seen, used or heard
> of the OneNote product previously but it looks like it could be very
> useful for me.
>
> There's no outlook but I guess that's not a problem because I mostly
> use web based emails anyway and my isp account I can always just use
> thunderbird or something else for that as Outlook Express no longer
> seems to come with Windows 7. I don't really use Access that much and
> I have an older version I can always instal if I ever need to.
>
> Thanks,
>
> John

Try OpenOffice
http://www.freewarefiles.com/OpenOff...gram_2542.html

I've used it to access new .docx Office files since I still have the
old Office 2000 installed and it uses .doc

It works for Win98-Win7 and I've seen it packaged in an older Ubuntu
(Linux) distribution

There is also a portable version for Win98-V
http://www.freewarefiles.com/OpenOff...ram_19681.html

It's not as good as the installed version, supposedly, but it's
functional.


If you don't like that, there is also LibreOffice
http://www.freewarefiles.com/LibreOf...ram_69307.html

good for Win9x-Win7, Mac, and Linux


And there is also SSuite Office, which has a lot of different versions
and lots of add-on programs you can get.
(go to www.freewarefiles.com - plug SSuite Office into the Search,
select Business/Organize)


There is really no shortage of other options available at this or any
other freeware site.

--
-There are some who call me...
Jim


"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's
troublesome."
- Isaac Asimov