M$ Excel vs. all the others question

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am looking for an office type program which is free. Since I am unemployed at the moment, I can’t afford M$ Excel. I have found two so far, which are

  1. OpenOffice from www.openoffice.org

  2. 602 PC Suite from www.software602.com/products/pcs/

Specifically, I’m looking for one with a Spreadsheet program closest to Excel. The reason is that every job I want to apply for has a requirement for knowledge of Excel and that is the only qualification I don’t really have.

I have two spreadsheet programs on my PC already which are the M$ Works spreadsheet and Word Perfect Quattro Pro (which came with the PC) but I have no idea how either one of those compares to Excel.

I found a 60 day trial version of Microsoft Office on M$ website and downloaded it (216 mb). From what little (and I do mean very little) I know about spreadsheets, Excel doesn’t look all that different from all the others. So I’ll just embarrasingly jump right in with a stupid question. What does Excel do that the others don’t?

Thanks in advance for any help.

2

OpenOffice is pretty close other than the odd syntax difference when doing formulas.

3

If your trial version has a tutorial, try it out.

4

Modern spreadsheets can be really complex things. I do Excel development as part of my IT consulting job. I have never seen things so complex in my life. You can do things in Excel that will make people’s head spin because it has a programming language and all kinds of interfaces to other system embedded in it. That is why I have to own MS Excel.

That said, the vat majority of people including you, do not need all these extreme features. Spreadsheets are spreadsheets when it comes to the plain vanilla everyday stuff. I have played around with OpenOffice and it should meet your needs. It can read and write most Excel files so you use things that people already made.

I would look around on the web for professional looking spreadsheets that people already made and modify them. That is the quickest way to learn and you already have a template.

5

My sympathies w/regards to the cashflow situation. (Can you accurately claim to be a student? There’s an academic version which is really the same software minus upgrade path or some such minor restriction which is quite a lot less $$$).

I must say that while I don’t admire many Microsoft products (I think most of the work that can be done in most of the others can be done in freebie knockoffs or in competitor software; and in the case of Word in particular, it’s a standard for no reason pertaining to quality, Word just plain sucks), Microsoft Excel is a truly nice piece of software, the best of their line. I’ve been using it since version 2.2 and there’ve been a couple times when only Excel has prevented my Mac from being a true Microsoft-free zone. Buy it if you can, it’s actually worth the price.

6

Your library may have CDs which have Excel training on them. That can be an easy way to get familiar with Excel. Also, some temp agencies provide free training on Microsoft Office if you register with them.