Free Office Software article discussion

debitcardmayhem

tronator wrote: »

I can't see it advertised here at all. Or are you the one, who advertises it here?

He bl!!dy does now ....hit the tin

Jivesinger

This is the MSE page with it on:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/free-office-software

wendydoris

My father has written a reference book using lotus, which apparently isn't available any more!

He is currently able to edit it using an old laptop with windows xp.

Does anyone know if there is software out there that can convert it to a more up to date document!

cookie365

Is it an .lwp file?

If he still has access to Lotus the best option would be to save it in .rtf format, which is pretty generic and most wordprocessors can cope with easily.

Otherwise, LibreOffice has an import filter for .lwp that makes an OK job of it.

Nina_Gorbunova

My 2 cents - Teamlab Office for personal use . One of the closest alternatives to MS Office when it comes to formatting quality. Works in browser and provides co-editing and commenting capabilities, so suites perfectly for document collaboration.
Teamlab includes processors for text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Integrates with Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive and Google Drive.

Disclosure: no secrets - I represent Teamlab, however, strongly believe that spreading the word about useful freebie shouldn't be censored))

ThemeOne

I haven't read the whole thread, so apologies if it's already been mentioned, but I just wanted to give a quick plug for the browser SeaMonkey.

It runs on the same engine as Firefox (Gecko) and is actively developed. Unlike Firefox it's retained the old-style menus rather than going for a new-style interface.

It includes an integrated email client, very similar, to Thunderbird, and an integrated HTML editor. Even if you don't use these, I've always found SeaMonkey an excellent browser.

Rosie1980

I use Dropbox to share files with a variety of people and I need them to be able to see them as I do and edit as well. I've tried Libre Office but it loses some of my formulas in Excel; in Word when documents are edited in LibreOffice then opened in Word the pages break in different places and the pics are so dark you can't see them. Any recommendations before I just one by one try all the free Office alternatives available or with that much sharing do I need to buy Office? I also found the constant message to change to .ODF annoying. I need it to be available Offline? Any help appreciated.

orrery

Rosie1980 wrote: »

I use Dropbox to share files with a variety of people and I need them to be able to see them as I do and edit as well.

There are some minor differences that show up if you switch between the two. The solution would be to keep the file in .odt for text documents and .ods for spreadsheets and not use Word - after all, everyone can download LibreOffice for free and use that.

If you need to store in a Word format from LibreOffice, then you can load a free viewer from Microsoft (there are free viewers for Word, Excel and Powerpoint) to see how it looks. You can even open the Word viewer and copy and paste content out into LibreOffice. I've found LibreOffice compatibility to be excellent - at one point we were being sent contract documents in Word .docx format from a client which crashed Word. Opening them in LibreOffice and saving in .doc format fixed the problem.

I use both MS Office and LibreOffice on my machines (I have to have MS Office for work) but I use LibreOffice by preference as it is being constantly updated.

Rosie1980

Thanks orrery but the pictures that can't be viewed at all well in Word is a real problem for what I require. Also the people I have to share docs with are not remotely computer literate and asking them to download stuff and open in different programs would be an issue. And spreadsheets dropping random formula is an issue when working with large spreadsheets, I can't check for what might be missing everytime they are opened, none of what I do is difficult stuff which is why I was so surprised it wasn't as fluid as everyone makes out.

orrery

Rosie1980 wrote: »

I was so surprised it wasn't as fluid as everyone makes out.

I'm not sure that you will find what you are looking for simply because Word is continuously being updated - I've just got a new laptop which has Windows 8.1 (don't go there!) and Office 2013, which is all quite different again.

For the sort of collaborative work you are doing you might try importing your documents into Google Docs and then everyone working on them on-line in the same system.