Office 2019 or 365?
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Office 2019. I prefer one payment only and to deal with my own machine. I've been happily using Softmaker Free Office for a long time already, but I need to work with some macros and Power BI next year.
One foot here, the other one in Wonderland
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Jim_Snyder wrote:
use UltraEdit
I looked at UltraEdit, and wow does it have a ton of features. Almost looks like its feature overkill.
Common sense is admitting there is cause and effect and that you can exert some control over what you understand.
Some of the files I work with are streams, and I can use a macro in UltraEdit to separate a .csv into X12 fields or database entries. The column mode is nice as I usually end up reformatting SQL from entry level developers in order to be able to read their code.
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Some of the files I work with are streams, and I can use a macro in UltraEdit to separate a .csv into X12 fields or database entries. The column mode is nice as I usually end up reformatting SQL from entry level developers in order to be able to read their code.
Jim_Snyder wrote:
The column mode is nice as I usually end up reformatting SQL from entry level developers in order to be able to read their code.
Oh, now that's a nice feature! You should see the crap I get sent to me. Sigh..
Common sense is admitting there is cause and effect and that you can exert some control over what you understand.
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I just cancelled my 365 subscription, I REALLY do not like buying the software every year. I have so little use for anything but email that Google tools meet my needs.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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The Office 365 subscription is so cheap and comes with so many nice features that I honestly don't even know how this is a debate anymore TBH.
Blog: [Code Index] By Mike Marynowski | Business: Singulink
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My business has Office 365. We have 7 people, and having OneDrive and SharePoint Online free us from having to store anything work-related on the laptops. I use my Surface when going with customers, so it's a bliss just click and show the presentation from SharePoint Online. We even share sites with customers, who not necessarily have O365, and they can download the project files, and upload their own. Skype for business gets the job done on the videoconference front, all our OneNotes are stored and shared through SharePoint, and we even use Planner for some projects that need more of a loose control (otherwise, we use Project). Half of our operation is in O365, the other half is in Visual Studio Online. So, having Office to update every year or so is really an added bonus for us, not the main reason we pay for O365.
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But don't you have to pay for Google tools too? My real need is for an Outlook replacement for the Mac, email and calendar working off of Microsoft Exchange Online. Using Office 2011 today but it has quirks in the current macOS High Sierra and Mojave.
riclf wrote:
But don't you have to pay for Google tools too
Only with the ownership of my data, I only use mail, sheets and doc as my requirements are very minimal and AFAIK there is no monetary cost to using them.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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LibreOffice - I hate Word, and am not a fan of the subscription model either. If write a document, I want to be able to read in in five years time ... without buying the software again.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640 Never throw anything away, Griff Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Keep in mind that anyone w/ a OneDrive account can use Office online and it will update old files: Microsoft Word Online - Work together on Word documents[^] I would dump my Office 365 account and use that, but then I wouldn't have all that OneDrive storage.
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Well, if you do the math, it's about the same whether you buy a new version of Office every few years or just spread that over month to month for the time that you use Office 365. I don't know about the shrinkwrap version, but I know that w/ 365 you can install on a lot of machines including MacOS for five users anywhere and you also get to use the Store versions on large screen devices and you get a lot of OneDrive storage. I still would dump my subscription and just use the online version of office, but my dad enjoys using it, my wife insists on using Outlook instead of Outlook.com or Windows mail, and I need all that OneDrive space. It's like cutting the cord: I pay nearly as much for Internet and streaming subscriptions than I did for cable.
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Office 365. The subscription is very reasonably priced and I can install it on a total of 15 devices (5 computers, 5 phones, 5 tablets) and have access to my documents everywhere. Plus, Outlook comes along in the bundle, so no more backing up PST files and moving them from computer to computer when traveling (I HATE web-based email!). The apps are up to date and I do get all that OneDrive storage PLUS more email storage than I can ever imagine using. It's made my life simpler.
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I've been on 365 now for years. All five licenses are being used, 4 work and 1 personal. I mostly only use Outlook/Excel/Word pieces. Even though it includes Access, I still prefer working in Access 2002 for query building.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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Agree re Word - it is almost nothing like a word-processor, and after all these years and revisions can still get into such a knot with complex formats that your document becomes unmanageable. I still buy and use Wordperfect - been my favourite since the days of DOS version 4.2. They still struggle to achieve compatability with Word documents though, because of MS secret sauce that sometimes even the Word devs don't seem to know about! (I've got a doc prepared with an older version of Word here that the latest version cannot open because it uses some feature that Word doesn't support any more - WP opens it though!) I note Corel trying to move to a subscription model too now, be a great shame if that happens...
Mike Winiberg wrote:
re Word - it is almost nothing like a word-processor, and after all these years and revisions can still get into such a knot with complex formats that your document becomes unmanageable.
If you master styles with Word, and you master the god-awful refloating of images to terrible locations on the page when things change, you can put together a 300 page B&W book with appendices and a multi-level index that looks as good as anything on the shelves. The index creation was much easier, and flexible than what was available in Serif Pageplus, which was supposed to be a step up, but was far from being so. If you take it a step further, you can create some VBA that will strip the document and output it in plain HTML that is actually clean HTML. In other words, once mastered, it is a monster of a program. (But those floating images were a mess to deal with.)
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Mike Winiberg wrote:
re Word - it is almost nothing like a word-processor, and after all these years and revisions can still get into such a knot with complex formats that your document becomes unmanageable.
If you master styles with Word, and you master the god-awful refloating of images to terrible locations on the page when things change, you can put together a 300 page B&W book with appendices and a multi-level index that looks as good as anything on the shelves. The index creation was much easier, and flexible than what was available in Serif Pageplus, which was supposed to be a step up, but was far from being so. If you take it a step further, you can create some VBA that will strip the document and output it in plain HTML that is actually clean HTML. In other words, once mastered, it is a monster of a program. (But those floating images were a mess to deal with.)
Can you hear yourself? 8) I agree, as a technical, knowledgeable user, it is possible to force Word (and I only chose Word because its the default word processor for many despite the fact that it is almost entirely unsuited to that task) to produce good quality output. But how does the average user, screaming at their screen because all their bulleted lists from some arbitrary point onwards suddenly have a different indent level, or their tables don't line up with their text, make it do this? I'm in a debate elsewhere inspired by this article: Software disenchantment @ tonsky.me[^] about how complexity and pursuit of the latest shiny thing has blinded both devs and users to the simple fact that much high-tech stuff is either unreliable, inefficient or simply bad at doing the things it was intended to do despite years of hardware and software 'progress'. This is because the users' requirements are not even part of the equation of much modern development, and the users are complicit in this! We devs are also complicit - always wanting to use the latest 'framework' because it will solve all these problems, even though getting it installed and working takes days because the dependencies are not properly documented, some of the libraries are not up-to-date, our core language modules or browsers do not have some essential but omitted from the docs package installed etc etc. And even once it's working it needs the latest version of IoS or Android, thus making it unusable for billions of existing phone owners etc. Mind you, it can go the other way: GDS (UK government digital service) have achieved a tremendous technical feat in amalgamating and making stylistically consistent many Government websites - however, they have in many cases entirely lost sight of why those sites exist and how they are used, leaving behind beautiful, easy to read websites where it is not obvious how to get to where you need to be when you are trying to achieve a particular task (eg paying your taxes), or containing basic noob mistakes in forms that were considered passe 20 years ago (eg not allowing spaces in credit card numbers but rejecting the number rather than silently ignoring the spaces, but only when you've reached the end of the form and submitted it). Yet you can bet the sites pass all the tests, because the sites are written to the tests, not to how real users actually use the pages.
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Can you hear yourself? 8) I agree, as a technical, knowledgeable user, it is possible to force Word (and I only chose Word because its the default word processor for many despite the fact that it is almost entirely unsuited to that task) to produce good quality output. But how does the average user, screaming at their screen because all their bulleted lists from some arbitrary point onwards suddenly have a different indent level, or their tables don't line up with their text, make it do this? I'm in a debate elsewhere inspired by this article: Software disenchantment @ tonsky.me[^] about how complexity and pursuit of the latest shiny thing has blinded both devs and users to the simple fact that much high-tech stuff is either unreliable, inefficient or simply bad at doing the things it was intended to do despite years of hardware and software 'progress'. This is because the users' requirements are not even part of the equation of much modern development, and the users are complicit in this! We devs are also complicit - always wanting to use the latest 'framework' because it will solve all these problems, even though getting it installed and working takes days because the dependencies are not properly documented, some of the libraries are not up-to-date, our core language modules or browsers do not have some essential but omitted from the docs package installed etc etc. And even once it's working it needs the latest version of IoS or Android, thus making it unusable for billions of existing phone owners etc. Mind you, it can go the other way: GDS (UK government digital service) have achieved a tremendous technical feat in amalgamating and making stylistically consistent many Government websites - however, they have in many cases entirely lost sight of why those sites exist and how they are used, leaving behind beautiful, easy to read websites where it is not obvious how to get to where you need to be when you are trying to achieve a particular task (eg paying your taxes), or containing basic noob mistakes in forms that were considered passe 20 years ago (eg not allowing spaces in credit card numbers but rejecting the number rather than silently ignoring the spaces, but only when you've reached the end of the form and submitted it). Yet you can bet the sites pass all the tests, because the sites are written to the tests, not to how real users actually use the pages.
Mike Winiberg wrote:
I only chose Word because its the default word processor for many despite the fact that it is almost entirely unsuited to that task
Since a beginner user can open it up and 'process words' with it, as far as basic editing, without issues, it isn't exactly 'entirely unsuited' to that task. The problem comes into being when they want something formatted differently than an old-fashioned Times New Roman Simple Manuscript, so to speak. At that point they will have to learn styles, and in other packages they would have to learn other approaches.
Mike Winiberg wrote:
But how does the average user, screaming at their screen because all their bulleted lists from some arbitrary point onwards suddenly have a different indent level, or their tables don't line up with their text, make it do this?
I am not negating the problems like this that crop up, but I've never had a bulleted list do what you say (although interrupting a numbered list with paragraph text, and getting bullet numbers correct afterwards is something I've sworn over). At that point the user is forced to learn the 'Word Way'. And they will be able to overcome the problem once they do so. I agree, it sucks, but a master in any profession has to master his tools. If you have a better tool, use it.
Mike Winiberg wrote:
Can you hear yourself?
I believe so. All I am trying to do is point out the side of Word that is overlooked by those who bash it without having taken the time to finish the mastery process. I won't defend the difficulty of some of the problems you will face mastering Word, but at the end of the process you will find that Word is capable of some very powerful feats, and in some cases it is far easier in Word than other packages. Editing indexes is one example. From a brief overview of this page, Word is far easier and more versatile than recent Word Perfect versions (when I tried WP for the task long ago, it was worthless in this regard). I played with Open Office at one time and could not come close to Word's capabilities and ease of use editing entries. Word actually made the editing process almost fun (after figuring it out by reading a page similar to the one I just pointed to). If you don't need the full power of Word, as several in this thread have indicated, then use something simpler.
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Mike Winiberg wrote:
I only chose Word because its the default word processor for many despite the fact that it is almost entirely unsuited to that task
Since a beginner user can open it up and 'process words' with it, as far as basic editing, without issues, it isn't exactly 'entirely unsuited' to that task. The problem comes into being when they want something formatted differently than an old-fashioned Times New Roman Simple Manuscript, so to speak. At that point they will have to learn styles, and in other packages they would have to learn other approaches.
Mike Winiberg wrote:
But how does the average user, screaming at their screen because all their bulleted lists from some arbitrary point onwards suddenly have a different indent level, or their tables don't line up with their text, make it do this?
I am not negating the problems like this that crop up, but I've never had a bulleted list do what you say (although interrupting a numbered list with paragraph text, and getting bullet numbers correct afterwards is something I've sworn over). At that point the user is forced to learn the 'Word Way'. And they will be able to overcome the problem once they do so. I agree, it sucks, but a master in any profession has to master his tools. If you have a better tool, use it.
Mike Winiberg wrote:
Can you hear yourself?
I believe so. All I am trying to do is point out the side of Word that is overlooked by those who bash it without having taken the time to finish the mastery process. I won't defend the difficulty of some of the problems you will face mastering Word, but at the end of the process you will find that Word is capable of some very powerful feats, and in some cases it is far easier in Word than other packages. Editing indexes is one example. From a brief overview of this page, Word is far easier and more versatile than recent Word Perfect versions (when I tried WP for the task long ago, it was worthless in this regard). I played with Open Office at one time and could not come close to Word's capabilities and ease of use editing entries. Word actually made the editing process almost fun (after figuring it out by reading a page similar to the one I just pointed to). If you don't need the full power of Word, as several in this thread have indicated, then use something simpler.
I think you have (partly) missed my point: I agree with you entirely, but you and I are knowledgeable, skilled users. Mr Blogs simply trying to stick a picture in the middle of an otherwise plain letter, and who would have done it by physically pasting it onto a typed out letter where he had manually left a gap, is not and never will be. I believe that software should make doing things like that easier for unsophisticated users. It should not be necessary to spend weeks learning the vagaries of Word (or indeed any such package) to be able to make anything other than the most basic use of it. It takes a lot of training to become a skilled touch-typist, but anyone can nevertheless learn to produce quite sophisticated output with a typewriter without ever learning typing skills. The same is not true of most software packages - they require you to learn many skills before you can do anything at all with them: operating the computer, using a mouse, using a keyboard, starting the application - all before you can even get one letter on the screen. Then you have to know how to operate the printer, how to get the app to send stuff to it. These are things that many people find it hard to do, so mastering the vagaries of Word et al so they can type a letter really is beyond them. My point is that it shouldn't be like this. Don't get me wrong, I don't have any (or even some) of the answers to this, but I can't help feeling that somewhere along the line we have lost our way...
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My choice was simple... If for some reason I am out of a job for a long time and I need to cut back on everything then what happens when I 'turn off' the word processor? For that matter what happens if I turn off the internet? I don't want the answer to either of those to be 'oops now what...'.
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LibreOffice - I hate Word, and am not a fan of the subscription model either. If write a document, I want to be able to read in in five years time ... without buying the software again.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640 Never throw anything away, Griff Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Same for me. I've been using OpenOffice and then LibreOffice for years, at the begining just because it was free. Recently I had to install Office in my work to fill a .doc template, and LibreOffice messed it up. I found absolutely terrible what they have done to that program. I had to restart it many times because sometimes I moved an image an suddenly the content of the pages dissapeared or became strange characters. Unexpected behaviors, commands overlapping. Or try to resize an image inside a text box when the margins of the objects disappear. Commands that I could never found, other ones hidden in unexpected places... What a mess! This application was not so bad last time I used it. While LibreOffice became better and better with time, I see that Word followed the opposite direction.
