Office software: what do *you* do with yours?

isofa

Other than PowerPoint (which I lothe) and Publisher (which as a professional user, I see is useless, I use InDesign and Adobe packages for design), I use all the main components of Microsoft Office Professional constantly.

I create front and back end database components with Access for a variety of clients; I use Excel for everything from creating custom financial, survey and charting applications for clients in VBA, to general personal bank and expense account tracking; Word for all basic word processing (complex design I shift to my Adobe suite); Outlook I use all the functions, from task, calendar and contact management through to all my e-mails in and out for various accounts.

Couldn't live without it, OpenOffice is of little use to me, due to it's limited power. I use MS Office on both PC and Mac.

Unless you need all the fancy and powerful facilities, Open Office is an excellent free alternative for a home user. If you need Office, the Home and Student version is excellent value, try Amazon for prices.

esuhl

Well, at home I use Word to type letters and since my email client only displays plain text, I occasionally use Word to type an email if I need to include screenshots. I then print the page as a PDF and email it as an attachment.

I use Excel for random calculations (compound interest, etc.) and if I'm buying new hardware I can keep a list of the components that I'm considering in a nice table so the specifications are easy to compare and the URLs to the relevant shops are all on one place. I have also written quite a few VBA programs in Excel, so I can paste URLs and comments into a spreadsheet then run a script to update a table of links on my webite automatically, for example.

I never use Powerpoint or Outlook, and use Access very occasionally (once every two years or so!)

I couldn't live without Excel - I don't think OpenOffice uses VBA (though I haven't really checked). MS Word isn't vital, though, and on some of my PCs I have OpenOffice's word processor or AbiWord installed instead.

At work, however, it's a different story: I use Outlook for emails, Excel for productivity data and client statistics, and Word because it integrates with Outlook and our in-house our form-reading software. Couldn't live without 'em as things are, though I'm sure we'd find a way if we had to.

superscaper

Word (can't write a thesis or reports without it).
Excel (how else can I manipulate mountains of data).
Outlook, great email program and integrated calendar to store my appointments.
Onenote, useful notetaking (all forms of media).
Powerpoint, needed for storyboards.
Access (well I'm trying to teach myself to be better at database manipulation)
Publisher (I do use this occasionally for proper typesetting etc for printing various things at home, I'd use the Adobe CS3 Master Collection for all my graphic/publishing needs at work)

Sput2001

j-bean60 wrote: »

Thank you so much - I will definitely be looking further into this.

Alternatively look at www.software4students.co.uk where the qualifying criteria aren't so stringent.

j-bean60

NickMidgley wrote: »

Alternatively look at www.software4students.co.uk where the qualifying criteria aren't so stringent.

Thanks, after looking into the other site, I'm not sure if my son would meet the relevant e-mail criteria. This looks like it's going to be a better solution.