Windows 7 and Office Suite Software

[Tony Vella]

I ask this question to those who use MS Office 2003 Pro on a Windows 7
machine. I was given 2003 Pro when it first came out and I have used it
consistently (Word, Excel, Access) on Win XP, Vista and now 7 and it has
always done everything I asked of it except that I had to purchase MS
One Note 2010 separately because it was not included in 2003.

Recently I have been receiving emails from an open-source office
software group suggesting that now that I am using Windows 7 Premium I
should get rid of my MS 2003 Pro (but keep my One Note) and adopt the
most recent version of their office suite.

I wonder if others have been approached with this recommendation and
what the general feeling out there is about the whole thing. TIA.

 

[Tony Vella]

How did this unnamed office suite get your email address?

Quite a while ago I wrote asking if Access database Tables, Queries,
Reports, etc. could be directly accessed, updated and saved without
converting. But that was some two years ago, I never thought they would
keep email addresses that long.

 

[ray]

I ask this question to those who use MS Office 2003 Pro on a Windows 7
machine. I was given 2003 Pro when it first came out and I have used it
consistently (Word, Excel, Access) on Win XP, Vista and now 7 and it has
always done everything I asked of it except that I had to purchase MS
One Note 2010 separately because it was not included in 2003.

Recently I have been receiving emails from an open-source office
software group suggesting that now that I am using Windows 7 Premium I
should get rid of my MS 2003 Pro (but keep my One Note) and adopt the
most recent version of their office suite.

I wonder if others have been approached with this recommendation and
what the general feeling out there is about the whole thing. TIA.

OpenOffice.org is a very good, free, open source replacement for MS
Office. It's generally more compatible with other versions of MS Office
than MS Office is. Currently, many Linux distributions are switching from
OpenOffice to a fork called Libre Office. Both are available for MS,
Linux and MAC for free.

 

[Jeff Layman]

OpenOffice.org is a very good, free, open source replacement for MS
Office. It's generally more compatible with other versions of MS Office
than MS Office is. Currently, many Linux distributions are switching from
OpenOffice to a fork called Libre Office. Both are available for MS,
Linux and MAC for free.

Well, LibreOffice isn't a bad suite. But to say it is more compatible
with other versions of MS Office than MS Office is (I assume you mean
the new version isn't compatible with older versions) is not my
experience. It most certainly had trouble with docx files, for example
with OO/LO. And opening doc files, editing, saving as doc, and
reopening may not get you what you thought you had!

Because I can't stand the Ribbon interface, I have been a bit stuck
until recently, when I downloaded KingSoft Office Suite 2012 (free suite
available here:
http://www.kingsoftstore.com/kingsoft-office-freeware.html). The Writer
opens docx without problem, and you can choose the old style menu or
(ugh) a Ribbon style. It's missing things like VBA support,
unfortunately, so no macros, but other than that it's not bad.

No database, unfortunately.

 

[Char Jackson]

I ask this question to those who use MS Office 2003 Pro on a Windows 7
machine. I was given 2003 Pro when it first came out and I have used it
consistently (Word, Excel, Access) on Win XP, Vista and now 7 and it has
always done everything I asked of it except that I had to purchase MS
One Note 2010 separately because it was not included in 2003.

Recently I have been receiving emails from an open-source office
software group suggesting that now that I am using Windows 7 Premium I
should get rid of my MS 2003 Pro (but keep my One Note) and adopt the
most recent version of their office suite.

I wonder if others have been approached with this recommendation and
what the general feeling out there is about the whole thing. TIA.

Hi TIA,

It's unlikely that many of us have received email solicitations from
your unnamed office suite company.

You reached out to them and expressed an interest in their product, so
it shouldn't be a surprise that they're using your interest to market
their product to you, regardless of the elapsed time.

It's up to you to either ignore their emails or act on them.

My personal feeling is that, if you can afford it, MS Office is the
one to have. Despite claims, the others are not as good because the
business world has adopted the MS Office suite as a pseudo-standard,
and while the others try to be as compatible as possible, and make
claims about their compatibility, nothing is as compatible with MS
Office as MS Office. If you need to interface with people who are
using MS Office and you need to maintain a sense of professionalism,
MS Office is the only choice.

 

[Ed Cryer]

I ask this question to those who use MS Office 2003 Pro on a Windows 7
machine. I was given 2003 Pro when it first came out and I have used it
consistently (Word, Excel, Access) on Win XP, Vista and now 7 and it has
always done everything I asked of it except that I had to purchase MS
One Note 2010 separately because it was not included in 2003.

Recently I have been receiving emails from an open-source office
software group suggesting that now that I am using Windows 7 Premium I
should get rid of my MS 2003 Pro (but keep my One Note) and adopt the
most recent version of their office suite.

I wonder if others have been approached with this recommendation and
what the general feeling out there is about the whole thing. TIA.

I use MS Office 2007. I got it because I thought I'd have lots of use
for it, but that's turned out to be very limited.
I use Excel for databases for DVD and other collections, Word for
documents I want to print, and Powerpoint merely to be able to look at
presentations of comical and unusual pictures that people keep sending me.

It cost a lot; and I'm pretty sure I could do all that with Open Office.

Ed

 

[Ken Blake]

I ask this question to those who use MS Office 2003 Pro on a Windows 7
machine. I was given 2003 Pro when it first came out and I have used it
consistently (Word, Excel, Access) on Win XP, Vista and now 7 and it has
always done everything I asked of it except that I had to purchase MS
One Note 2010 separately because it was not included in 2003.

Recently I have been receiving emails from an open-source office
software group suggesting that now that I am using Windows 7 Premium I
should get rid of my MS 2003 Pro (but keep my One Note) and adopt the
most recent version of their office suite.

I wonder if others have been approached with this recommendation and
what the general feeling out there is about the whole thing. TIA.

Here's my advice. Ignore all of our opinions and "general advice." If
you're happy with Microsoft Office 2003, stay with it. Or if you'd
like to try the unnamed open-source office software, by all means try
it, and decide for yourself whether you prefer it to Microsoft Office.

My recommendation is to decide for yourself what you like best, and
not listen to others. This is a question like "which is better, a Ford
or a Chevrolet?" You get opinions, not answers, to questions like
that.

And by the way, there's no need to prefer all the programs in one
suite to all those in another suite. You can pick and choose from more
than one suite. Personally I prefer WordPerfect to Microsoft Word, and
Excel to Quattro Professional, and those are the ones I use.

 

[Steve Hayes]

And the name of the office suite is?

He told you.

MS Office 2003 Pro

 

[Tony Vella]

Not that one, the other one. Reread his post.

I am never quite sure whether to post product names or not. The
recommendations I have been receiving are about OpenOffice Suite and the
emails do not come from Org, they come from a group that uses OO.

I have nothing against installing OO on my machine, God knows I have
more space than I could ever use. I was simply trying to find out - in
a not too understandable way, it seems - what a 2012 software could
possibly give me that a 2003 software cannot vis-à-vis word-processing,
databasing, and spreadsheeting.

Thanks again to all.

 

[ray]

Well, LibreOffice isn't a bad suite. But to say it is more compatible
with other versions of MS Office than MS Office is (I assume you mean
the new version isn't compatible with older versions) is not my
experience. It most certainly had trouble with docx files, for example
with OO/LO. And opening doc files, editing, saving as doc, and
reopening may not get you what you thought you had!

Evidently, our experiences are different. I've had fewer problems opening
MS Office documents in OpenOffice than going cross version with MS.

 

[John Williamson]

I am never quite sure whether to post product names or not. The
recommendations I have been receiving are about OpenOffice Suite and the
emails do not come from Org, they come from a group that uses OO.

I have nothing against installing OO on my machine, God knows I have
more space than I could ever use. I was simply trying to find out - in
a not too understandable way, it seems - what a 2012 software could
possibly give me that a 2003 software cannot vis-à-vis word-processing,
databasing, and spreadsheeting.

Thanks again to all.

They can all do the basic stuff well. If you don't need the advanced
stuff, pick the one with the best interface for you. If you do need the
advanced stuff, then pick the one that does it in the way you find
easiest. If you use existing Access databases, then Access is your
friend, if it's new databases, the pick the front end you prefer and use
mySQL or any other SQL database program. Just be aware that the only way
to guarantee that the formatting you have set up in text based
documents, databases and spreadsheets will be accurately used is to use
the same version of the same office suite used to generate it.

To a certain extent, the best programmers from Open Office have moved to
Libre Office. Currently, Libre Office will open and work with some
MS`formats not supported by Open Office.

Just my two penn'orth.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Well, LibreOffice isn't a bad suite. But to say it is more compatible
with other versions of MS Office than MS Office is (I assume you mean
the new version isn't compatible with older versions) is not my
experience. It most certainly had trouble with docx files, for example
with OO/LO. And opening doc files, editing, saving as doc, and
reopening may not get you what you thought you had!

I echo your experience, not just the word processor but the spread
sheet as well. As others have said, if you want to exchange documents
with MS Office users the results are decidedly mixed. If you just want
it for your own use, they work fine and you save $$$.

--
Zaphod

Adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly),
manic self-publicist, terrible bad at personal relationships,
often thought to be completely out to lunch.

 

[Char Jackson]

Evidently, our experiences are different. I've had fewer problems opening
MS Office documents in OpenOffice than going cross version with MS.

I have exactly zero compatibility problems moving back and forth from
MS Office 2003, 2007, and 2010. You can't get much better than zero.

 

[Char Jackson]

I am never quite sure whether to post product names or not.

That's one of the oddest statements I've heard in awhile. I wonder
what happened to give that impression.

 

[Philip Herlihy]

... I was simply trying to find out - in
a not too understandable way, it seems - what a 2012 software could
possibly give me that a 2003 software cannot vis-à-vis word-processing,
databasing, and spreadsheeting.

Thanks again to all.

Paraphrasing excellent advice once given to me in a bicycle shop (!) -
if you don't know what benefit you might get from spending extra money
(or in this case effort) then you very likely don't need to spend it.

 

[Tony Vella]

That's one of the oddest statements I've heard in awhile. I wonder
what happened to give that impression.

One time I wrote about a bad experience with a specific product - I gave
the name - that not only screwed up some of my files but which would not
even let me uninstall it. Well, I was contacted and warned not to
publish any more stuff along the same lines. The shillings were not as
plentiful as would be desired at the time so my wife and I decided it
was easier to just shut up. I have been rather careful since then; I'm
an old geezer and I don't particularly need problems.

 

[dweebken]

I ask this question to those who use MS Office 2003 Pro on a Windows 7
machine. I was given 2003 Pro when it first came out and I have used it
consistently (Word, Excel, Access) on Win XP, Vista and now 7 and it has
always done everything I asked of it except that I had to purchase MS
One Note 2010 separately because it was not included in 2003.

Recently I have been receiving emails from an open-source office
software group suggesting that now that I am using Windows 7 Premium I
should get rid of my MS 2003 Pro (but keep my One Note) and adopt the
most recent version of their office suite.

I wonder if others have been approached with this recommendation and
what the general feeling out there is about the whole thing. TIA.

No need to change if you're able to do everything you wanna do without
effort. So long as MS Office 2003 is getting security updates there
shouldn't be an issue. If MS stops the security updating service for
this version, then you should consider moving to something that's
supported, to avoid security exploits that keep getting invented out on
the howling ether. If you need to open Docx diles, MS has an Office
Compatibility Pack for free download that might work for you. This
allows you to open Office 2007 and 2010 documents in office 2003 and
read them. You can edit them too but can only save in office 2003 or
earlier format from your suite, which is for the most part fine if you
don't need the new features, and the saved versions are perfectly
compatible with the newer software.

By all means if you have the space the time and the willingness to
learn, play with the other free open source office suites (Like IBM's
Lotus Symphony, or OpenOffice.org or its other knock-offs), they don't
require you to remove anything, you'll still have all the MS stuff
working too so you can use either. However in my experience, except for
the simplest documents, I've always had very poor document fidelity with
reproducing MS Office documents in Org suite. The only other reason
you might want Org's suite is if some kind sole sends you an odt
document or such that Office 2003 can't read. But in my experience most
ppl don't do that.

 

[Char Jackson]

One time I wrote about a bad experience with a specific product - I gave
the name - that not only screwed up some of my files but which would not
even let me uninstall it. Well, I was contacted and warned not to
publish any more stuff along the same lines. The shillings were not as
plentiful as would be desired at the time so my wife and I decided it
was easier to just shut up. I have been rather careful since then; I'm
an old geezer and I don't particularly need problems.

Thanks for explaining. All I can offer is that it's darn near
impossible to get help with something if you don't say what you need
help with. We even have one poster in the group who thinks it's cute
to refer to things as prog1, for example.

 

[Tony Vella]

No need to change if you're able to do everything you wanna do without
effort. So long as MS Office 2003 is getting security updates there
shouldn't be an issue. If MS stops the security updating service for
this version, then you should consider moving to something that's
supported, to avoid security exploits that keep getting invented out on
the howling ether. If you need to open Docx diles, MS has an Office
Compatibility Pack for free download that might work for you. This
allows you to open Office 2007 and 2010 documents in office 2003 and
read them. You can edit them too but can only save in office 2003 or
earlier format from your suite, which is for the most part fine if you
don't need the new features, and the saved versions are perfectly
compatible with the newer software.

<snip>

As a matter of fact I did receive a Word docx document from a friend a
few months back and couldn't open it. I told him about it and he sent
it again in 2003 doc format. It worked fine. I didn't know about the
Comp. Pack from MS; I'm going to look for it right away in case it
happens again.

Thanks again.

 

[Nil]

One time I wrote about a bad experience with a specific product -
I gave the name - that not only screwed up some of my files but
which would not even let me uninstall it. Well, I was contacted
and warned not to publish any more stuff along the same lines.
The shillings were not as plentiful as would be desired at the
time so my wife and I decided it was easier to just shut up. I
have been rather careful since then; I'm an old geezer and I don't
particularly need problems.

I'd take that as a personal challenge, and probably mention the name
twice as often!

Really, there's nothing they can do about it. And if you have an
experience like that, I think it's good to let other people know about
it.