Free Office Software article discussion

artywriter67

My apologies! As a newbie, I forgot to say how helpful I am finding this forum and Martins Money tips.

chrisjw37

My suggestions and they are very powerful and FREE

FastStone Image Viewer - not only views and makes slideshows of your pics, movies etc BUT can edit them quickly too. Uses 2 monitors if you have them, so you can them facing back to back or use a projector as the other monitor!

IrfanView for viewing photos full screen, plug your laptop into a TV with and HDMI cable or a VGA and size is no object - I've done it on a 50" with no problems, slideshows at family events - easy.

Need to convert a Webpage into a portable document to e-mail, keep or print?
doPdf acts as a printer and makes almost instant multipage documents compatible with Adobe Acrobat pdf format, I've used it for 5 years, great on a lptop with no printer 0 just e-mail it to yourself for later printing.

Need a quick screen capture and drawing program?

PicPick
Brilliant for capturing a map and adding text - like directions for easily lost daughters to follow. You can draw lines, add road numbers etc or just capture and mail / keep what you see on see your screen.

Even smaller for fast screenshots which you can paste in a free Drawing program like Paint.Net
is MWSnap

I used the two together to produce complex teaching guides for the ridiculously useless NHS software that cost billions and didn't even have a use guide. Its easy to catch real data examples and paint out the names and details and add fake ones - Mr Fred Bloggs and his family appear in every training manual. I made them all up.

(PS: this software - Cerner Millenium and Choice is why all the appointments get screwed up - it really is bad)

Picasa is brilliant photo album, publishing and editing software - as good as Adobe Elements - I use it instead these days!

Teas ready! Got to go, hungry like the wolf!

silvasava

New desktop PC had Windows 7 pre-installed & I didn't want to fork out for another set of MS programs. I was recommended Open Office (just as good as Word , Excel & Powerpoint) I've used Avast for security & just tried to load Mozilla Thunderbird for my email as I REALLY liked Outlook (not Express) I'm having problems though - I'm with Virgin (old NTL) for my email & I dont seem to be able to get it through Thunderbird but I did get it through Outlook - any help/suggestions welcome ...... please?

patman99

Greenshot - Excellent free screen-grabber. Has loads of features such as boxes, arrows, labels etc.

PDFCreator - Runs as a printer. Useful for programs that have no 'export as PDF' feature. Just 'print' the document and select 'PDFcreator' under the printers available.

Both the above are now in use across Siemens as replacements for paid-for programs.

WhiteChristmas

silvasava wrote: »

I'm with Virgin (old NTL) for my email & I dont seem to be able to get it through Thunderbird but I did get it through Outlook - any help/suggestions welcome ...... please?

Is your account an old @ntlworld address? I had loads of problems last year trying to get my wife's new computer set up.

Some changes they made to the old server made it clash with Thunderbird. Existing installations still work (my own laptop has been running Thunderbird with my @ntlworld account for about 3 years), but you can't set up new Thunderbird associations with old ntlworld accounts.

I overcame it as follows.

Set up a new @virginmedia address and associate this with Thunderbird.

Then set up your old @ntlworld address to forward to the new @virginmedia account.

I suspect the ntlworld servers will be closing down soon, anyway, so we might as well get ready for it.

jayme1

artywriter67 wrote: »

I have Microsoft Office 2010 professional on my main PC, but only the starter package on my laptop so cannot share between both when working on my writing.
As I am officially retired and not particularly technically savvy, which free word programme would you recommend I download so I can switch between both PC and laptop, please? I have Microsoft 7 home edition on both.

LibreOffice you can save files in formats that work between the Microsoft Office and LibreOffice,

You would have to transfer the files with a memory stick or you could use something like Microsoft Skydrive or Dropbox to sync the files between both computers via the internet automatically (if you use Skydrive you can even view and edit the documents on any web browser on any computer)

Neil49

I use Libre Office and frequently have to open and update files in MS Office formats. They seem to keep it up to date in terms of MS Office compatibility and I've had no problems going between the two.

I have Libre Office set so that all documents I create on it are saved in MS formats (i.e docx or xls etc) by default. You can set this up within the Load/Save settings.

I do work for a national charity and have to complete returns which are sent to me in MS Excel. I do all the updates using Libre Office, save them in MS Office 2007 format and return them by email without any problems.

You may find that when you transfer files across and double click on them to open you will have to specify Libre Office as the programme to be used and also select the 'default' tick box to always use this programme for this type of file.

silvasava

White Christmas -thanks for your info. I did wonder if it was something like that as my ntl was linked to outlook about 10 years ago! I've changed my email address to virgin & input a new password but I'm still having the same problem????? I won't link my old address to my new one until I can get Thunderbird up & running........:(

orrery

Neil49 wrote: »

I do work for a national charity and have to complete returns which are sent to me in MS Excel. I do all the updates using Libre Office, save them in MS Office 2007 format and return them by email without any problems.

Indeed. There can be issues in transferring if people have used complex formatting, but not usually in simple documents.

If you do want to see how the document you have created works in MS Office and you don't have it, you can download a free Word Viewer, Excel Viewer etc from the Microsoft site. As far as I can see these are just a stripped down version of the full program.

Also, if you find that you can't open the newer docx or xlsx files in older versions of Office, you can download an Office Compatibility pack from Microsoft which will allow you to import them.

People are very odd though - despite me recommending OpenOffice or LibreOffice (effectively the same thing) on other forums, when people have been asking where to find cheap versions of Office, they seem to ignore the advice and feel better about buying a full price product on the cheap, rather than one that is free!

silvasava

Groan - I've been configuring & reconfiguring Thunderbird & Virgin & I STILL keep getting that my username or password is not recognised - grrrr!