I bought my laptop after Christmas for school, but it didn’t come with more than a trial version of Microsoft Office, which I was able to use only 25 times. Now, since I’ve exceeded 25 uses, I can’t do any more than open files and look at them with Microsoft Office. I need to type a few papers, and I figured it would be easy to upgrade to a full version; however, I can’t seem to be able to get Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007 over the internet… it seems like I’m being forced to buy the CDs.
Am I missing something here? When I tried opening Word and clicked the link that said “buy full version online,” it directed me to the site where I had 3 choices of versions, all of which except $220. I’m not going to pay seventy dollars more (and still not get Powerpoint, which I need) to get something online, but it looks like that’s my only option. Can someone help me out here, either by directing me to a website where I can easily get what I need (Word and Powerpoint, namely), or do I need to trek out to Best Buy before it closes tonight?
You’re not going to get powerpoint and word without buying one of the packages/suites. Buying them individually will be incredibly expensive (i mean like twice the cost of the package in which you get both and a couple other things). I advise just running to Best Buy.
I’m very curious what happened in the nine minutes between the first post and this one? Do you live next door to Best Buy, or did you figure out how to get a download copy?
I found OpenOffice worked well with basic, simple word processing documents and spreadsheets. When I tried to use it for manuscripts with complex formatting, indexes, tables, and annotations, things got screwed up. Ditto when I loaded large analytical spreadsheets with macros and complex formats.
OpenOffice works beautifully if either (a) everybody you need to exchange documents with uses OpenOffice or (b) your documents are pretty simple.
I would agree with that. The harsh truth is that a huge amount of must-have information is tied up in files whose names end in .doc or .xls, which, despite all the noble effort, open source programs can not yet handle reliably. A glimmer of hope for Open Source fans is that Microsoft’s latest Office formats, the ones ending in “x”, are not compatible with anything, and don’t seem to be becoming accepted as a de facto standard like .doc and .xls were. And Office 2007 is a positive pest for people who have invested heavily in earlier versions of MS Office. Getting an Access 2003 script to run in Access 2007, for example, can be very difficult.
There are basically two variations. One is the Home and Student edition, which comes with a license for installation on three computers simultaneously. The other is student pricing, which is generally a discount on more expensive software packages.
A third possibility is that the school might have a student media licensing program. That can be the cheapest by far, especially since it’s generally the most expensive software, but I’m not sure about the licensing agreements once you’re out of school.
I can believe that OpenOffice would have trouble opening ridiculously complex MS Word documents but I don’t think there any issues with creating OO documents from scratch, no matter how complex.
As an aside, does anybody know a concise summary that explains the whole word processor paradigm in engineering terms or something? I struggle with the simplest things in every single word processor program.
For example, how do I fix a page to a page number and make the rest of the document flow around it? Like, if I want some page to stay page 7, so if I type past the end of page 6, it spills over onto page 8 without affecting page 7.
And why is it that sometimes I press tab and the entire paragraph gets indented, and then I can’t unindent without cutting the whole paragraph and pasting it back where I am. Pressing the unindent button does nothing, neither does backspace, I can indent further and then unindent back, but not all the way. This has happened in both OpenOffice and MS Word, so I’m thinking it must be a feature I don’t understand.
To do this in Word, you want to enclose the page 7 stuff inside a “frame”. Look for more info in Help or elsewhere about "frame"s.
You probably have some sort of “AutoFormatting” turned on. To solve the immediate problem, go to Format / Paragraph and adjust the left margin. To prevent it from happening in the future, there are two places to go, and I’m not sure if there’s a difference. (I’m looking at Word 2000, by the way.) One is Format / AutoFormat / Options. The other is Tools / AutoCorrect / AutoFormat.
There are probably books about this stuff - try the Computers section of your local Borders, Barnes&Noble, or whatever. A lot of it is online, but I’ve had to wade through a lot of junk till I find the answer. I use Tables a lot, and have had some frustrating times with them. I’ve finally figured out how to put text after a table, when the table is currently on the last line of the document. (Answer: go to the end of the table, and then Table / Split Table.) But I still can’t figure out how to format cells of a table which don’t contain an end-of-paragraph mark.
Since you’re a college student, if you really want Office 2007, check out The Ultimate Steal. Office Ultimate for $59.95. This is a Microsoft promotion, not a knockoff reseller.
Yep, my university has this. I just went online to lok at their prices, and they have Office Pro Plus 2007 for $70, encrypted to allow only 2 installations.
They also have Adobe CS3 Design Standard Student (Acrobat Pro, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop) for $220. Ridiculously cheap compared to regular prices.
One of the little secrets about MS Office is that MS doesn’t really care if you’re a teacher or a student. The “retail” price of Office has priced them out of the household upgrade market to a large extent. I bought my Teacher/Student version at Fry’s Electronics, and was prepared to show my teacher ID, but I wasn’t asked. I’ve heard that they are selling it online with only a check box to “verify” your status. Making it that easy to circumvent is tantamount to just telling you to go ahead and do it.
Actually, what used to be Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003 and nominally was only available to students and teachers (and even then this was loosely enforced) is now Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 and is for use in any household (although not for commercial or even non-profit use).