Microsoft problems

misty-mitts

I'm not at all techie, so please keep any advice simple!  Microsoft is giving me all sorts of problems.  I pay for cloud storage for my important stuff, but Microsoft Onedrive interferes with the working of that.  Is there any way that I can permanently switch it off? 

I'm also considering ditching Microsoft altogether as my subscription is due for renewal shortly.  I'm considering replacing it with LibreOffice or FreeOffice to handle my Word and Excel documents.  Do I install whichever I choose before or after cancelling Microsoft?  Do I have to do any sort of conversion to my documents, or will they just open as usual in the new app?  Is there anything else I should be aware of if I change apps/software?

Finally, I also use Microsoft Clipchamp and Windows Media Player.  Will I lose access to these if I ditch my Microsoft subscription?  Many thanks in advance.

Neil_Jones

You can have as many office programs installed as you like but only one can be default for any file type at any time, though you can right-click "open" into anything that'll open it.

Windows Media Player (Legacy) is part of Windows and has been since the days of Windows 3 back in the early 1990s.

Clipchamp is documented here, there is a free option.:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/clipchamp#choose-a-plan

onedrive is part of Office but confusingly works without Office in some circumstances, so... depends.

Vitor

- I pay for cloud storage for my important stuff, but Microsoft Onedrive interferes with the working of that - 

OneDrive ensures that the 'important stuff' is synced from your PC up to the cloud. If OneDrive was working for you, would you stay with Microsoft?

Also what subscription with Microsoft have you got?

Eyeful

1. I now never bother using Microsoft Word or Excel. I have used  LibreOffice for years and never found any problem when trying to open and use my old Microsoft Word or Excel documents.

2. Suggest you first download LibreOffice & get that running first.
Then transfer & store some trial Word & Excel documents onto your computer.
Get them running on LibreOffice to check you are happy with using it.
If you are happy, then download all the rest of the files to your computer

wongataa

misty-mitts said:

I'm not at all techie, so please keep any advice simple!  Microsoft is giving me all sorts of problems.  I pay for cloud storage for my important stuff, but Microsoft Onedrive interferes with the working of that.  Is there any way that I can permanently switch it off? 

Yes you can turn OneDrive off.  Stop it running (right click icon in taskbar and choose the stop OneDrive option or the option to that effect).  Go to the start up tab of Task Manager and stop OneDrive running at startup.  Now it is off.

Or you can uninstall it.  It may well get put back in an update though but can be uninstalled again.

mksysb

Google docs is another alternative and it's free.

Prism

You can also use the web version of Office which is free, although you would need to store your documents in OneDrive