MS Office Rant

[Sac Arrow]

I like MS Office programs. I like Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, and Publisher. Yes, I use all four. I can ditch Outlook if needed. It's just an email client. Well I mean I can''t ditch it for work, because that is what we use for work but I can ditch it personally otherwise.

For Word and Excel, there are other alternatives. Open/Libre Office. They are file compatible, but don't work as well. They are not as easy to use and don't handle advanced formatting well. This is not a practical limitation for me, personally, other than for work. Let me back up, okay, I need the actual Word for formatting POD print edition books. Open Office won't cut it.

I use Publisher. I use it to produce book covers. I love Publisher. It does exactly what I need. And, not much more but it's easy to use. Publisher is not going to be supported after 2026, meaning it won't be included in an MS Office 365 subscription suite.

This is a rant in its own. I F*$(&%$(#IING ABHOR subscription software. I hate that s***t. I hate it. I f********g hate it. Somehow, in the confusion, IT installed Office 365 on my home laptop. Which is my work laptop but it is my home laptop too. I don't know why. Maybe he thought he needed to for it to be compatible with the work programs.

I think I had... Windows 10, and MS Office 2016 installed prior. There have been exactly zero useful improvements to 365 vs. MS Office 2016. In fact they have gone in the wrong direction. Sort of like the Army did with the M16A2. The M4 is great. The A2 bites feral penis. The A1 is solid. But I digress. MS Office 2016 worked perfectly for what I needed to do. Still does. Now I'm going to lose Publisher and I have invested a LOT of Publisher graphic files over the years.

My laptop is getting old. I'm due a newer one. What should I do? (spoiler, poll questions)

 

[cowman]

If you like Office 2016 I'd just obtain a copy of it and use that, I don't like subscriptions either.

On the subject of Microsoft doing obnoxious things, I finally got tired of various things in windows 10 and installed linux mint on my main desktop. We'll see how long I keep it up but so far so good. The last straw(among many) was once again having the system reboot from an update and force me to go through a setup wizard which is very obviously meant to try to push me into buying Office 365.

 

[bbchien]

get adobe acrobat.

 

[bentmettle]

Typing this on my Mac, but Office 365 at work has been really helpful for collaborative projects, but we have a lot of OneDrive/Sharepoint/Azure integration.

Lean into the O365 and let all your stuff migrate towards some cloud account, then once you've got it all sync'd, toss your current laptop off a parking garage and have them install Publisher on your new one with a perpetual license, and O365 with whatever deal with the devil site license they've made.

I screwed up on this machine and didn't realize that if I cancelled the subscription to Parallels, it wouldn't convert to a perpetual license fixed at the last rev...instead, I now have to buy another license after I opted to get out of the subscription rat race.

 

[DaleB]

I feel your pain. I have Office 2013, which I got for $10. Yep. Worked for GloboMegaBank, and they made a deal with Microsoft to offer Office to employees for ten bucks. I've used every iteration of Office since, including 365, and you're right -- there is literally nothing in the newer versions that is any better than even 2013.

Somewhre I have the original installation media files for 2013. I need to dig that stuff up and make sure I preserve it. I too despise subscription software. I have several packages that have gone to annual subscription only models, and I made sure I had a non-expiring license key and the install files for all of it.

Oh... and was Office 2016 yours, or your employer's? If it's yours, find the install media and license key and install that shtuff.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

I screwed up on this machine and didn't realize that if I cancelled the subscription to Parallels, it wouldn't convert to a perpetual license fixed at the last rev...instead, I now have to buy another license after I opted to get out of the subscription rat race.

VMWare Fusion, VirtualBox, UTM are all alternatives that you may be able to use without a subscription.

 

[Flatiowa]

You think you have problems, I still regularly have to work on an industrial processing line machine that runs on windows 98, in a very humid environment and has obsolete components even down to the circuit board levels in the system. You haven’t had “fun” until you have to break out the jewelers loop to look through the magnifying glass over the soldering table and make your own screw feed three axis controllable manually operated soldering iron to repair tiny circuit boards.

 

[midlifeflyer]

I think about ditching Office periodically, but with 30 years of macros, VB Code, and other customizations, I don’t see it happening. Besides, the included 1TB cloud included is one of the cheapest cloud options out there.

I’ve done the Open/LibreOffice route. Ok but not good enough. I’m also beginning to appreciate Google’s offerings in the shared environment. But, basically, I just suck it up and subscribe.

 

[GeorgeC]

I hope they're done giving me cloud stuff I didn't ask for, because it's probably time for them to start giving me "AI" stuff I didn't ask for.

 

[Piperonca]

I think I had... Windows 10, and MS Office 2016 installed prior. There have been exactly zero useful improvements to 365 vs. MS Office 2016. In fact they have gone in the wrong direction. Sort of like the Army did with the M16A2. The M4 is great. The A2 bites feral penis. The A1 is solid. But I digress. MS Office 2016 worked perfectly for what I needed to do. Still does. Now I'm going to lose Publisher and I have invested a LOT of Publisher graphic files over the years.

I just purchased two licenses of Office 2021 lifetime license for $54.97 ea. Installed yesterday on wife's and my PCs. It will ask if you want 365 and you say no. Very surprised to find the deal wasn't a scam.

Offer from PC World

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

Just enroll in my class each semester - the school provides free MS365 to every student for as long as they are in school. The only downside is that it's a bit of a commute.

 

[2-Bit Speed]

Have you considered getting a typewriter?

 

[Sac Arrow]

I think I still have one.

 

[asicer]

Just enroll in my class each semester - the school provides free MS365 to every student for as long as they are in school. The only downside is that it's a bit of a commute.

I have this recurring dream where I'm enrolled in a class but never attend and then I have to go take a final but can't find the room.

Sounds like I'd be a perfect fit for your class.

Have you considered getting a typewriter?

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

 

[DaleB]

I have a correcting Selectric III here if anyone wants it.

 

[Albany Tom]

You don't need Linux to run open office. It runs fine on Windows. I've used spreadsheets and word processors since Visicalc and Scripsit. We've already passed the peak on both, IMO, because the Borland products were better than anything MS ever put out. Yes, I'm dating myself. But yes, I use current versions of the MS stuff every day at work. None of these things have added any important features since proportional spaced fonts and built in graphs. It's words in lines and paragraphs, and it's numbers added up with some really simple math built in.

When I was a teenager, I remember readying Byte magazine (yep, always a geek), including Jerry Pournelle's column on, I think, writing on the computer. Which at the time was a little bit revolutionary. Anyway, he had some sort of list of things that would be in an ideal word processor, and I'm pretty sure all that stuff was put into all of them 30 years ago, along with a lot of other stuff that nobody needs or uses. So if your publisher doesn't like open office, hire somebody to convert it, or find a different publisher, because they're being ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of positive things have happened in computer software in the last few decades. Video games are way better. Voice recognition and imaging tools are amazing. Inexpensive or free 3D modeling and animation tools are impressive. But I'm not sure all of that balances out with MS figuring out how to make spreadsheets and word processors run ten thousand times slower than they used to, while charging more money for them and making them harder to use.

Yep, go out and rent some software. Then check your spam folder for some great investment offers from Royalty in a far away land that you didn't know were your relatives. But don't feel bad, because lots of companies are going for this rental thing, because a) they don't consider the costs of supporting that giant fleet of PC's as an issue and b) they haven't figure out that there's a common denominator to all these ransomware attacks, and the first letter always, always, starts with 'M'. But it's what everyone else does, so it must be OK. Pass the margarine and high fructose corn syrup so I can make my sandwich.

I could keep going, but that's enough rant for me.

 

[DJTorrente]

I just purchased two licenses of Office 2021 lifetime license for $54.97 ea. Installed yesterday on wife's and my PCs. It will ask if you want 365 and you say no. Very surprised to find the deal wasn't a scam.

Offer from PC World

And Office 2019 for $20!

The only catch I can see, is that "lifetime" to them could mean the lifetime of the product, i.e., whenever they decide to "sunset" support, not the lifetime of whatever hardware you can get to run it.

I had a bad experience with a Lexis platform I loved for running my solo practice; I paid $500 for a "lifetime" subscription. Well, some lifetimes are longer than others. Two years later they ditched the entire product; tried to move me into their more complex platform, promised transition support then reneged and pointed me to some $5k consultants to manage my transition.

 

[pfarber]

LINUX is never the answer. I've been using it since it was on a 3.5in boot/root floppy disk.

Open Office is a horrible joke. Google docs it crippled garbage. Printing in Linux is a pita as is Bluetooth. Apps are always 80% done and never as stable as a commercial windows variant.

systemclt made a simple system a horrible mess.

for a server yes Linux has a place. as a desktop? no.

 

[Sac Arrow]

I've used Open Office before, and the word processor is fine for basic minimally formatted documents, but it starts falling apart when getting in to advanced formatting, and although file compatible with Word, things like styles, etc... do not carry over properly between the two. I'll use it for letters and ebook manuscripts, but not for engineering reports or POD print format publications. It has a Powerpoint equivalent, but not a Publisher equivalent.

Or maybe they do. Some cursory googling suggest that the Draw program will open a .pub file. I could probably achieve the same functionality with Word. I basically just need to take a full page photo and overlay it with text and other graphics. I just need to have the ability to recolorize the images and set transparencies.

 

[eman1200]

gimp

 

[rwellner98]

Have you considered getting a typewriter?

I just upgraded mine!

 

[MauleSkinner]

@Sac Arrow , for the record, your rant ain’t got nothin’ on my wife’s rant on the subject.

 

[DaleB]

LINUX is never the answer. I've been using it since it was on a 3.5in boot/root floppy disk.

Open Office is a horrible joke. Google docs it crippled garbage. Printing in Linux is a pita as is Bluetooth. Apps are always 80% done and never as stable as a commercial windows variant.

systemclt made a simple system a horrible mess.

for a server yes Linux has a place. as a desktop? no.

I used to say Windows has no place in a datacenter, and Linux has no business on the desktop. I still feel that way. Obviously I'm in a minority; even my former GloboMegaBank had twice as many Windows servers as Linux. Of course if they got rid of Windows that'd only need half as many to begin with. And most of the Windows servers were actually running on Linux VM hosts, I think.

I will admit that Macs can be used as a viable business desktop.

I just upgraded mine!

That would have been easier with a 1052 Selectric console, which was the very first IBM machine I was ever trained to repair - followed by the System/360 and all of its wonderful 60s era peripherals. I suspect there are only a tiny number of 1052s still in existence, though. Probably no more than double digits.

 

[Half Fast]

Anybody else using WPS Office? I've been using the free version for years and haven't yet needed to do anything it didn't support.

What I really need is a decent freeware CAD tool. I've been using the free version of nanoCAD and, while it works okay, it's frozen at version 5.0 and won't open files saved in DWG-2018 or later.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

What I really need is a decent freeware CAD tool

Freecad works for me. Allegedly opens autodesk 2d .dwg drawings. Version 1.0 is a huge improvement over the older versions.

 

[Half Fast]

Freecad works for me. Allegedly opens autodesk 2d .dwg drawings. Version 1.0 is a huge improvement over the older versions.

Thanks. I’ll give it a try.

 

[NealRomeoGolf]

There have been exactly zero useful improvements to 365 vs. MS Office 2016.

This is not true. The xlookup function came out in 2019. Way better than vlookup.

 

[pfarber]

freecad is an abomination. compared to the other CAD environments it is hot garbage on a warm summer day. it will never be a finished product it will always be beta and at some point someone will get a wild idea to redo everything to incorporate this one idea that changes the entire paradigm of the program. I've seen it happen on so many premier Linux packages that I've given up on Linux. and this is from someone that ran a dial-up ISP and had wall to wall Linux servers. Windows NT really was a game changer and other than the cost it was miles ahead of Linux on the desktop.

The number of Linux failures is astounding. gaming on Linux no. office productivity on Linux no. hardware support like printing and NAS on Linux no. desktop on Linux no. it's real home is as a headless server environment and even then there is nothing really groundbreaking about the packages available. sure it has secure DNS and mail and web serving but that's available just about anywhere now.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

Go NX or go home.

 

[pfarber]

remember when the Commodore Amiga was poised to be King? Revolutionary this and that but almost no software. swing and a miss.

OS/2 was supposed to be a Windows killer and even has Windows emulation... kind of... but no software. Windows is King because it has one thing the others don't... useable apps that do real work.

 

[Mikey52]

I loved os/2.

 

[pfarber]

I loved os/2.

it's Big promise was being able to run Windows apps in an seamless emulation mode, it worked kind of sort of maybe. but still simple things like sound cards graphic cards and even mice required an OS2 specific driver.