# Alternatives for MS Office



## DickDastardly40 (Dec 4, 2009)

I bought SWMBO and myself a matching pair of Laptops in August to replace my aging one which we used to argue over usage as the price for both was half of what I paid for the previous one.

They came with a 60 day MS office 2007 trial and MS works installed, I thought no biggy I'll make do with works when the trial runs out. I should perhaps point out that I've been a word user since forever and dislike the new interface and my previous confuser had Office 2003 for which I cannot find the disc.

The trial ran out the other day and as I'm looking for a job and wanted to re-tweak my CV I thought I'd give works a go. Unfortunately none of the formatting seems to translate directly and while I could probably rejig it, I don't know if it'll work when emailed and opened in Word proper.

I then followed the link to buy the license for Word 2007 and MS seem so impressed with it, that they wanted to charge £99! 
 th_confused0052 

What I'm after is a reasonably priced alternative which will keep previous documents formatted in Word and hopefully will be compatible for others to open so they don't need a compatability model. (I also hate the docx suffix certain POP servers treat attachments as spam).

Thoughts Gents? 

TIA


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## dreeves (Dec 4, 2009)

try "open office" I use it in my laptop at work that does not have office suite. It will open word and excell with no problem and its free


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## ksouers (Dec 4, 2009)

You could try Open Office from Sun.

http://www.openoffice.org

It's a suite of programs like M$ Office; spreadsheet, word processor, presentation and the like. It's also M$ compatible. I think FREE should be reasonably priced.


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## DickDastardly40 (Dec 4, 2009)

Wow Quick replies, TY!

Downloading Open Office now, fingers crossed!


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## DickDastardly40 (Dec 4, 2009)

Done and dusted, seems fine, opened my CV and it looks as it did.

One other question, as I don't have MS picture manager, how can I alter the size of scanned documents easily? Does Open Office come with a programme to use as I'm too thick to find it


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## cfellows (Dec 4, 2009)

I bought and installed office 2007 and I hated it. I have since gone back to my older version, Office 2002. 

Chuck


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## ksouers (Dec 4, 2009)

DD,
In the past I have used a program called Easy Thumbs to resize pictures. 
It can be used to change to any size, not just thumbnails.

I don't know if it's still available.


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## modeng2000 (Dec 4, 2009)

Is this the same thing?
http://www.fookes.com/ezthumbs/

I use also use Sun's OpenOffice.

John


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## ksouers (Dec 4, 2009)

That's it.

Thanks John.


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## arnoldb (Dec 4, 2009)

Hi Guys - just another alternative:

You can also try IBM's Lotus Symphony
I's also based on OpenOffice, and is also free - There are both Windows and Linux versions available.

I use OpenOffice at home, but have quite a couple of users at work that I gave Symphony to, and they seem very happy with it.

Regards, Arnold


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## doc1955 (Dec 4, 2009)

I use open office and like it much better than any of the Microsoft stuff.
I also have the open office portable you don't even have to install anything with that it just sits on your jump drive and when you plug it into a computer you have instant access to it. That way no mater where you go you can take it with you. Also along the same lines I use a portable graphics editor called GIMP which is almost exact features that PaintShop pro has. 
Here is a place to get some portable apps.
Portable Apps


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## ozzie46 (Dec 4, 2009)

For Pictures try a free program called "Paint.net". Seems to do most of what we would need.

 Ron


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## shred (Dec 4, 2009)

FWIW one of my research projects a while back was "alternate office suites". There's a small handful of them; Word Perfect, OpenOffice, Zoho, Google, etc, we tested them all and they mostly work pretty well to open/read/write basic MS Office docs ... but ... none are compatible enough to run a complex document back and forth to/from MS and not have the formatting go hinky after a while (sometimes it takes several round-trips or certain formatting to throw it off). I'm guessing that's not a problem for most folks, but if you do have to pass docs back and forth a lot, try and keep your edits all on one software package.


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## doc1955 (Dec 4, 2009)

shred  said:
			
		

> FWIW one of my research projects a while back was "alternate office suites". There's a small handful of them; Word Perfect, OpenOffice, Zoho, Google, etc, and they mostly work pretty well to open/read/write basic MS Office docs ... but ... none are compatible enough to run a complex document back and forth to/from MS and not have the formatting go hinky after a while. I'm guessing that's not a problem for most folks, but if you do have to pass docs back and forth a lot, try and keep your edits all on one software package.



I've used open office org and have had spread sheets in excel and word docs that have been worked on in MS and back with no problems. Anyone looking for an alternative to MS I strongly recommend getting Open Office and even better getting it as a portable app. They are a free down load. With open office you can even create pdf files.
And I also highly recommend GIMP for a free graphics editor which has all the bells and whistles and easy to use.
If you get the portable apps versions you can install them on your jump (usb) drive and don't need to install anything on your computers. You have nothing to loose I suggest giving them a try.


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## DickDastardly40 (Dec 6, 2009)

Just to thank everyone for their useful input, I have downloaded both Open Office and Paint.Net.

Both seem to do exactly what I need with no added hassle though Paint.Net appears to be a Microsoft product.

Very happy with the results.

Thank-You.


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## SignalFailure (Dec 6, 2009)

We've been running our business on openoffice for years with no problems and good interoperability with MS office. The forum at http://www.oooforum.org/ is the place to go for help if you need it or gimme a shout!

The downside with Paint.net is that you need the .net framework installed so you get the usual MS bloat. I've used Photofiltre (http://photofiltre.free.fr/download_en.htm) for years - was so impressed with the simplicity and features that I bought the Studio version (only about £15 I seem to recall). They also have a good help forum.

Cheers

Paul


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