My Win 10 box has trouble starting every week or so and I suspect it won’t last long. I’m perfectly happy with Win 10 although it will not be supported for much longer. I have Office 2003 (no, not a typo) on CD. I use Word and Excel frequently and they barely run on Win 10. Each time they run it is like a install, asking me if I want to make changes, etc. And if I am using them full screen you cannot switch to another program. I get around that by using them shrunk down a bit.
If I buy a Win 11 desktop will I be able to create and edit .doc and .xl programs?
Win 11 does not come with a full version of Office, but should have preloaded access to the Web Office.
You could switch to an Alt-Office product like Google Docs, the changes from 2003 to current Office is enough where switching to Google might be worth it.
I have both Microsoft 365 (for work) and LibreOffice. I also have Office 2010 on another computer but that’s Windows 10 so it’s not relevant to this discussion. I think I’ve got Office 2003 around here somewhere as well but I don’t currently have it installed anywhere.
Anyway, it is important to note that LibreOffice is NOT 100 percent compatible with Microsoft Office. It’s not bad, but it’s definitely not perfect.
Most of the issues that I have personally run into are formatting issues.
To be fair, Office 2003 isn’t fully compatible with later versions of Office either. Just be aware that if you switch from Office 2003 to LibreOffice you might have some formatting issues to sort out.
In case it matters, these have not been standard file formats for quite some time. Word has used .docx as its standard file format since Office 2007, and Excel uses .xlsx files. But I’m pretty sure they still can read and write those older formats.
Yeah, LibreOffice is a magnificent thing, but it has some rough edges.
In particular, Impress vs PowerPoint - basically the same ideas, but kind of painful to use Impress - and not just a matter of familiarity with menus and such - it’s just a bit more clunky - some things take more clicks, more navigation of menus, more fiddling, to get them done.
I was going to make the same points ECG and Mangetout did about LibreOffice. I use it myself, and for 80-90% of the things I do it’s more than fine. But if I need to share the documents with the outside world, that’s when the problems tend to shoot up. Though in many of those cases I’ll take the initial doc, “print” it to a PDF, and then send the PDF which makes it less manipulatable down the line, but normally (big qualifier) preserves the appearance. Which is a lot more steps.
I haven’t tried the Libre Office version of PowerPoint lately, but when I was working at Sun Star Office was our main word processing suite. There were a lot of problems showing Impress on PowerPoint. When preparing talks for a conference where PowerPoint was used I always used my home version of Office, and I often had to clean up slides from colleagues who did them on Open Office.
Has anyone checked the compatibility of Review in Word and Libre Office?
Many good Office alternatives mentioned, but you can also just get MS Office. A lifetime license for MS Office 2024 is in the $160-300 range, depending on sales and exact edition. I also frequently see sales of Office 2019 or 2021 in the $25-50 range.
I think if you’re still using such an old one, that the changes will be enough going to a new MS Office that you should look at the free alternatives first.
IMO the only thing that still excels is Excel. As spreadsheets go MS-Excel is excellent and has no competitor.
That said, almost no one uses MS-Excel to its full potential. I have seem some power users and it can be amazing but almost no one goes to those lengths.
PowerPoint? Does anyone use that any more?
Word…there is no shortage of text editors out there and, frankly, Word still kinda sucks. It’ll do the job…maybe. Mostly it is a pain in the ass and I see no good use for it these days. Indeed, I am kinda shocked that it has not been improved much in all these years. I have it and nothing about Word is easy to use…I struggle with it the rare times I use it.
99.9% of us can do just fine without MS-Office. I know it offers more than the above but mostly it is not worth it. You can do the same for less with other programs (unless you really are a power user with Excel).
Is there still a business need for MS Office? Maybe it’s just the industry I’m in (web dev), but none of the companies I’ve been a part of in the last 15-20 years have used Office. Everyone just used Google Docs or plain email, and Gsheets or Airtable or databases for calculations. In the rare event a customer sent us a Word doc, we’d just request a PDF instead. For presentations, either Google Slides or more recently, Prezi.
I struggle to think of a situation when any of the Microsoft tools could justify either their cost or their poor online collaboration relative to the easy and free Google versions. But maybe that’s just the particular circles I’m in?
I similarly haven’t seen LibreOffice in the wild anywhere since long before the OpenOffice.org days. Is there a generational gap here? Or maybe desktop office apps are just more popular in some industries than others?
I don’t need anything fancy. I use Word to write documents about local and family history. I could use anything. I’m an old Word Perfect user but no longer had the licensed install CD. Excel is for basically the same things that are lists. The one tool I miss is Adobe. I had it forever but a year or two ago they began demanding money to use all the features. So now if I want to save or print a PDF I can’t.
All of the computers on sale right now are Win 10 machines. Is there a cheap upgrade path to Win 11 if I buy one?
Depends, Windows 10 is mostly dead as of Oct 2025, so you need to ensure the PC meets the requirements for 11. If it does, you can do a free upgrade.
Do you have a Price range of what you’re looking to spend? That tends to help these threads. I would try to find a computer already running Win 11 if possible. One less hassle. Under $200 is easy to find. I use one in my game room. It runs 3 HDMI monitors and is used for Office 2010 Word & Excel, Internet Browsing, playing music and that is about it.
If you’re not gaming, you could consider a miniPC. They’re Win 11, use almost no energy and are so tiny, they hang from the back of your monitor. Mine is a year old now and no issues.
You should be able to Print & Save PDFs very easily from a variety of places, including even Chrome. Editing is what you won’t be able to do well without Adobe.
Last year during a Prime Day sale I got a lifetime Office download for $99. It didn’t come with Outlook, but mysteriously about a month after loading it, Outlook suddenly became available. I’m still not sure what that was about, but either way, $99 for Word/Excel/PowerPoint seemed like a bargain.
Not sure when the next Prime Day is, but something similar could occur.
That is a really good deal. Is it Office with or without ads?
How many machines can you use it on?
I need at least 2 but hope it is a Home License so it could cover my machines and 3 others. (Wife and adult kids)
If you buy a Windows 10 machine, check the Windows 11 requirements carefully. I recently had to discard a perfectly functional (and expensive) 8-year-old machine because the CPU doesn’t meet the requirements for Windows 11.
I’ve paid about that much each time i have bought a new Mac. (Dunno if the pricing is different.) I think it’s just been for one computer, and I’m sure it wasn’t a license good for the whole household. Certainly no ads.
But you might do okay with win365 for the household, much as it’s annoying to pay an annual fee.
No ads, just one machine unfortunately. Here’s the camelcamelcamel view of it, it was a great deal, but good ones still come along otherwise (assuming this is the kind of version you want).
Well, I have Adobe “something” since I can read PDFs. I just downloaded the latest version of Reader and installed it. All I can do is read. If I try to export it wants me to subscribe. There is no way to save or print. The options aren’t just grayed out, they don’t exist.