OT: Microsoft Office

andy83

Just had the pleasure of finding out my office 2010 beta trial ran out when i went to do some work

I use outlook a bit but could live without it but use word and excel loads

I also transfer files between work and home with word and excel

Do i bite the bullet and fork out for a copy of the basic package or is there just as good an alternative?

I was looking on software4students and the products give you two licenses but by the looks of it cant have them on two laptops which is what i need. Any techy people shed any light please

thanks in advance

nicklouse

i have MS Office Home and student 2007 on 2 PCs and 1 laptop. the licence is for 3 PCs.

andy83

Yea that was what I thought was ok but on the software4students website it says the following

How many computers can I install the software on?

You may:

install and use a copy of the Software on one personal computer or other device;
install an additional copy of the Software on a second, portable device for the exclusive use of the primary user of the first copy of the Software.
Please note, for Operating System software (e.g. Windows 7) you are only eligible to install the software on ONE computer, this is for operating system software onl

My brother is in education and will be eligable for it however need it put on two laptops but little unsure if this is ok.

Im tempted to just use a free one to be honest, but I do like office

hatbeard

talk to your it department at work. some software licenses allow for the user to run it on a home pc in addition to a work machine counting as one license and I vaguely recall this being possible with previous versions of office (depending on which version it was).

if it's for work purposes they might be able to sort it out for you.

andy83

nice idea but no chance my work will give me a license. They just say we have office on the pc in the office which is ancient but still expect to do work on it. Im not a typical office based job but some days need to do a lot on the pc, and they would also say i shouldnt be working from home, although impossible to get work done at times

I just found the google calender which seems just as good as outlook and dowloading openoffice to see what its like.

if the google calender is fine might just get the 3 user version off amazon, its that or a new merino top and tights

Will Snow

http://www.openoffice.org/ will do everything you need, basically

andy83

Will Snow wrote:

http://www.openoffice.org/ will do everything you need, basically

Just downloaded it and to be fair looks like I can do all i need on that. Ok Office looks nicer but it doesnt really matter too much.

little annoyed I had no warning trial was going to end and cant get into outlook for anything :x

Will Snow

just remember to save it as the right file type if you have to send it anybody else!! but yes, open office rocks, as does all open source software

PBo

i interpret the license conditions as meaning that the primary machine can be anything - either desktop or laptop, but the second one can only be portable - ie you could have 2 laptops, but not 2 desktops.

i use open.org too - but that doesn't fix your outlook situation.

asprilla

andy83 wrote:

nice idea but no chance my work will give me a license. They just say we have office on the pc in the office which is ancient but still expect to do work on it. Im not a typical office based job but some days need to do a lot on the pc, and they would also say i shouldnt be working from home, although impossible to get work done at times

I think he was talking about the MS Home User Programme. I can get a copy of office through this for free and can install it on as many machines as I like. I do, however, have to uninstall it when I leave the company.

I obtain it straight from MS, not from the company. No idea how you get your company on it though.

BillyMansell

andy83 wrote:

Little annoyed I had no warning trial was going to end and cant get into outlook for anything :x

Have you tried using Office 2010 Trial Extender as a temporary solution to accessing/recovering your data?

http://majorgeeks.com/Microsoft_Office_ ... d6461.html

Haven't used it myself but occasionally see it pop up on rss feeds from download sites.

itboffin

Real men use VI

MTFU

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

Morning

wgwarburton

itboffin wrote:

Real men use VI

1,$s/VI/ed/g

Cheers,
W.

deptfordmarmoset

Will Snow wrote:

just remember to save it as the right file type if you have to send it anybody else!! but yes, open office rocks, as does all open source software

I use OOo too - it's not as pretty as Office but it works well, it's legal (3.3 will be released soon) and it's free. I've not tried this but if 99% of your use needs to be in MS formats for other people you can simply save everything in Word/Access format as a default. The files will be slightly bigger in this format but that's not likely to be a big issue, and you won't have to remind yourself to always save as MS when sending docs out.

hatbeard

itboffin wrote:

Real men use VI

MTFU

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

Morning

I still handcode most of my websites in vi over ssh.

edit: personal websites that is. doubt my employers would appreciate me doing it on theirs.

andy83

PBo wrote:

i interpret the license conditions as meaning that the primary machine can be anything - either desktop or laptop, but the second one can only be portable - ie you could have 2 laptops, but not 2 desktops.

i use open.org too - but that doesn't fix your outlook situation.

hmm this is interesting

I have sent the company an email and see what they say. If that is the case I may just purchase it, failing that looks like its the freebe's which if im honest look like

and itb dont get extra geeky on me, i have no idea what your on about :P

jejv

WGWarburton wrote:

itboffin wrote:

Real men use VI

1,$s/VI/ed/g

s/\(ed\)/s\1/

http://sed.sourceforge.net/grabbag/scripts/turing.sed

wgwarburton

jejv wrote:

WGWarburton wrote:

itboffin wrote:

Real men use VI

1,$s/VI/ed/g

s/\(ed\)/s\1/

Now you're being silly! :-)

By all means call sed as a filter from vi or use it in a script.. but using sed when you have a perfectly adequate interactive tool like ed is just perverse!

Next you'll be trying to tell us that you typeset your thesis using only sed & TeX... Pah!

Cheers,
W.

PS If you arn't following this particular offshoot, be happy! Many hours of your life have not been wasted learning a skill that is now irrelevant...

fidbod

Getting back to the OP from the geek-boy discussions.

Open office is fine as long as you don't need to turn out good quality presentations or uses complex macros/VBA style scripts in excel... For me the OO spreadsheet app just isn't up to scratch.

If you need the microsoft product consider buying a technet subscriptions rather than just buying office. The costs are pretty similar but with a technet subscription you can refresh your entire software estate. It gives you multiple licences for pretty much all MS products.

Alphabet

+1 on open office. it's ace. for email, grab mozilla thunderbird.

if you're feeling more adventurous, partition your hard drive and whack linux ubuntu on there. super easy to do and it comes with everything you need preinstalled.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Will Snow

fidbod wrote:

Open office is fine as long as you don't need to turn out good quality presentations

i have never seen a good powerpoint presentation

andy83

ok I have just discovered something which basically means ill be buyhing office

As all my files are saved in 2010 it doesnt seem openoffice has a file extension for that so it has to save as a 2007 file which is a pita

i think ill just get the student copy but didnt want to fork out for it

PBo

andy83 wrote:

ok I have just discovered something which basically means ill be buyhing office

As all my files are saved in 2010 it doesnt seem openoffice has a file extension for that so it has to save as a 2007 file which is a pita

i think ill just get the student copy but didnt want to fork out for it

You can open them with OO though. Depends what you want to do - open them and then resave as .doc, or pay out....

lastant

I used Technical Traders for a copy of XP I needed for a laptop. They were recommended to me through another forum (can't remember which one now) and I got a genuine copy of the software.

Looks like they've only got up to Office 2007 though.

andy83

yea good point

to be honest if i can get the two licences for laptops with the student one ill just order that at £40 it aint bad

ill speak to the better half later and see what she thinks best

deptfordmarmoset

Alphabet wrote:

+1 on open office. it's ace. for email, grab mozilla thunderbird.

if you're feeling more adventurous, partition your hard drive and whack linux ubuntu on there. super easy to do and it comes with everything you need preinstalled.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

I thought about installing thunderbird but decided I could make do with simply using a google online account and calendar. Is stuff in Thunderbird compatible with stuff in Outlook, i.e. can you export Outlook data to Thunderbird?

sufferingpete

Sign up to a Gmail account and use goodle doc for the simple stuff

il_principe

Alphabet wrote:

+1 on open office. it's ace. for email, grab mozilla thunderbird.

+1 Thunderbird is ace.

jonginge

Il Principe wrote:

Alphabet wrote:

+1 on open office. it's ace. for email, grab mozilla thunderbird.

+1 Thunderbird is ace.

Used to use it. How's the exchange calendaring support these days (project lightning)?

il_principe

JonGinge wrote:

Il Principe wrote:

Alphabet wrote:

+1 on open office. it's ace. for email, grab mozilla thunderbird.

+1 Thunderbird is ace.

Used to use it. How's the exchange calendaring support these days (project lightning)?

Our company is so IT illiterate that we muddle through without exchange. My iPhone has more memory than our ancient server!

jonginge

Il Principe wrote:

JonGinge wrote:

Il Principe wrote:

Alphabet wrote:

+1 on open office. it's ace. for email, grab mozilla thunderbird.

+1 Thunderbird is ace.

Used to use it. How's the exchange calendaring support these days (project lightning)?

Our company is so IT illiterate that we muddle through without exchange. My iPhone has more memory than our ancient server!

Heh heh! Yeah, our email was a bit backward and took a lot of maintenance (the perils of starting up a company on a shoestring budget). We outsourced it a few years back: much better now