Help required purchasing Microsoft Office

kazmeister

Hi

I am looking for help in obtaining a Microsoft Office package for a new (basic) laptop. I wont be a massive user but do need this so that I can share documents/templates between my work laptop and my personal one.

I am totally confused as never having owned my own laptop prior to now, I thought that you could just buy what you required, install and that would be it. It now seems as if there is not just Office but Office 365 as well (not sure I need this, we have it at work and its above my head) and you either purchase for a year or pay monthly. I also saw a suggestion that you can order off Amazon. My laptop is a Lenovo ideapad 330 and does not have a disc drive so I am unable to install an old disc version we have of Office Home and Student.

Ideally I would like to pay a one off price for purchase, or a very cheap monthly payment.

Please can anyone make any recommendations.

TIA

steviebabes

No need for MS office unless you are using advanced functions. Download LibreOffice or Open Office. Both fully compatible with MS office and free.

dj1471

If you have it at work then first check if your company is signed up to the Home Use Program, this would get you a decent discount.

Have you considered LibreOffice, which is free?

kazmeister

Thanks for the comments so far. I haven't tried the LibreOffice as I had read that it isn't always compatible with Office documents.


I want to be able to open a document on one machine save it to a memory stick and then transfer it to the other and open without complications.


I will ask at work though, thanks.

esuhl

steviebabes wrote: »

Download LibreOffice or Open Office. Both fully compatible with MS office and free.

That's completely wrong. The two office suites are NOT fully compatible with each other.

esuhl

kazmeister wrote: »

I want to be able to open a document on one machine save it to a memory stick and then transfer it to the other and open without complications.

This is possible so long as you don't use certain incompatible features.



There will be complications with documents containing more complicated layouts. For basic text formatting, you'll be fine.

Tom99

esuhl wrote: »

That's completely wrong. The two office suites are NOT fully compatible with each other.

I use OpenOffice and as far as I am aware any macros I wrote in excel do not work at all when the file is opened with OpenOffice.

dipsomaniac

I bought office 2016 for less than a fiver a couple of years ago from eBay or just use office online for free

Undervalued

steviebabes wrote: »

No need for MS office unless you are using advanced functions. Download LibreOffice or Open Office. Both fully compatible with MS office and free.

No, not "fully compatible" not by a long way!

They are fine if you are just producing your own fairly basic stuff. However, as soon as you start interacting with others using the real thing or want to use company or university supplied templates etc you will start to experience all kinds of compatibility issues.

Undervalued

kazmeister wrote: »

Thanks for the comments so far. I haven't tried the LibreOffice as I had read that it isn't always compatible with Office documents.


I want to be able to open a document on one machine save it to a memory stick and then transfer it to the other and open without complications.


I will ask at work though, thanks.

What you read is correct!

Inner_Zone

kazmeister wrote: »

Hi

I am looking for help in obtaining a Microsoft Office package for a new (basic) laptop. I wont be a massive user but do need this so that I can share documents/templates between my work laptop and my personal one.

I am totally confused as never having owned my own laptop prior to now, I thought that you could just buy what you required, install and that would be it. It now seems as if there is not just Office but Office 365 as well (not sure I need this, we have it at work and its above my head) and you either purchase for a year or pay monthly. I also saw a suggestion that you can order off Amazon. My laptop is a Lenovo ideapad 330 and does not have a disc drive so I am unable to install an old disc version we have of Office Home and Student.

Ideally I would like to pay a one off price for purchase, or a very cheap monthly payment.

Please can anyone make any recommendations.

TIA

Using another computer copy the contents of the disk to a USB memory stick and install it from there, assuming it has not exceeded the licensed users allowed, sometimes three computer are allowed but depends on what version you actually have.