Though 2003 Excel still has the 65,536 rows and 256 columns limits.
2007 went up 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns. And Excel 2010 was 64bit.
It sounds like you don’t like the Ribbon bar, but that should only take a week to get over. Nothing was lost.
No major changes in VBA, but the Excel Formulas are more robust, especially the Randbetween function. But it all depends on what you do with Excel. The complexity of my game uses greatly exceed my tracking of household stuff or SDMB moderators notes.
If MS finds a way to completely break Office 2010 on me, I’ll probably jump to Google.
I have used LibreOffice for several years now. It works fine for the stuff I do, and I have no problem exchanging documents & spreadsheets with many others.
I still have my copy of Office 2007 installed on my machine, but I only use it for mass merging form letters. I could probably do that in Libre too, but I just haven’t bothered to learn how to use it there. And most of the time I’m starting from previous mass mailings and changing them.
It’s not completely gone, just mostly abandoned… technically you can actually still download “recent-ish” versions from the last few years at https://www.openoffice.org/, but the project overall is much, much less active than LibreOffice.
Both LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice were forks of OpenOffice.org. The short history is what I said above. The entire community abandoned OpenOffice once Oracle bought it, and by the time Apache received its remains, it was far too late — the world had already moved onto LibreOffice. The full history is on Wikipedia.
Concise timeline:
Full timeline that shows how far ahead LibreOffice (light green) is compared to Apache OpenOffice (light blue):
They’re all just successors/forks of the original StarOffice… continuing a 40-year-old legacy.
In contrast, Apache OpenOffice has 24 contributors total, of which only two have been active in the couple years… and they’re mostly making minor spelling corrections and adding or deleting spaces… it’s dead for all intents and purposes.
I have not used Word or Excel for literally decades— I am not a businessperson and do not fit the use case for Office-type programs. The OP said they were familiar with it, though, nothing wrong with that, and there are free alternatives.
I assume you’re talking about Office 365, which Microsoft is pushing with the implication that this is the only Office software that exists. It isn’t. When my friend who runs a home-based business needed a new computer and had to move to Windows 11, I recommended the standalone non-subscription version of Office Professional, which at that time was Office 2021 – Office 2024 was released just a few months later. I don’t remember what it cost – it was obviously a lot more than $129 – but I think it will be a good value in the long run. Microsoft’s subscription model is a scam.
IIRC a 365 subscription gets you something like five licenses. If it is just you then not so great but shared among a family the value proposition isn’t terrible.
I’m a heavy Word user, writing articles, book chapters etc., and documenting multiple lines of inquiry with it daily. To slap Microsoft’s grabby hands and to save money I installed LibreOffice. It didn’t work out.
LibreOffice would crash repeatedly, when Word managing the same files (up to 5 000 pages apiece) never did or does. This was the big issue. The compatibility wasn’t near 100%, with many stylings simply not transferring, or freezing up - ie., breaks done with LibreOffice could not be removed with Word etc.
While the basics are there in LibreOffice, when you start using it, you realize many pretty basic things are a little harder / more laborious on it to perform, compared to Word, which adds up to quite a bit of extra work that impedes the creative flow. Of course, many functions aren’t there at all. It’s a bare-ass option, after all.
In the end, I had to get back to Word. It costs dearly but there are no real alternatives.
I have a subscription to Microsoft 365 mostly for the OneDrive backups. All the files I care about are stored in the cloud and synchronized across multiple devices. The fact that it comes with Office to install on multiple computers is a bonus.
I get discounts though, both through work and because I have a Microsoft credit card (which gives me bonus points for all Microsoft and Xbox store purchases as well as streaming services I pay with it, and it gets autopaid every month from my checking account so zero interest or annual fees).
It’s not a scam at all if you really take advantage of it.
This thread is fantastic. I simply can not justify paying Microsoft $130 annually for my basic Excel uses.
If I were to save an Excel file into a Calc document, would basic functions (like SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, VLOOKUPS) convert automatically or would I need to re-write the functions manually? Also, how about its handling of basic macros for repetitive tasks?
Well, I cancelled the renewal of my subscription. Be trying out LibreOffice. Most of the replies that point out issues or problems are from much heavier users than myself. Thanks for all the great replies and advice.
The 365 subscription hasn’t gone up to $129. What’s happened is that they have upgraded you without asking, to a tier that includes Copilot and some ‘free AI credits’. If you go to cancel your subscription, you will be offered ‘365 Classic’ which doesn’t have Copilot - i.e. the plan you had before, at the same price you had before.
If you open an xlsx file in LibreOffice Calc, it will probably work exactly the same as you’d expect in Excel. I’m sure there are exceptions, but for the basic things I do, such as sum cells and manipulate text, I can move back and forth between Calc, Excel, and Excel Online without any issues.
When I’m using Calc and trying to figure out what functions to use in a formula to accomplish something, the Excel examples I find almost always work without any changes. I suspect much of the syntax goes back to VisiCalc.
Here is a link to the Microsoft instructions for downgrading saving money by jettisoning the Copilot stuff.
If you want a non-subscription based version of MS Office, that is available for $149, and never expires (but expect it to stop working when you are forced to upgrade to Windows 16 in 2038). Here is a link directly to Microsoft, but it can often be found on sale at other stores.
