What Word and Excel type programs are you using?

[Tax Prep by Deb]

This is not for me, but for one of my clients.  They recently purchased some new computers and of course these not longer come with any kind of office products.

 

They only use basic things, simple excel applications and basic word processing.  I looked into purchasing Microsoft Office, but it seems expensive especially for just a single user.  What do you guys use?

 

Is there any good free ones out there?  So afraid to download for fear of viruses, but again the cost of Microsoft is pricey for the number of licenses we need.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Catherine]

Go to ebay.  Buy a new, registerable, version of Office that is two or three versions old, for small money.  You're golden.

 

I still run Office 2003 on my home office Windows 7 machine.  For the new office/new machines I bought Office 2007 - brand new and registerable! - from ebay for like $45.

[Jack from Ohio]

Office Home and Student 2007.  Acquired the same way Catherine said.

[Pacun]

Office 2003 will do it.

 

Math never gets updated... so calculations will be done correctly. To make letters, I could use WordPerfect 5.1 or MS Word 5 and still be OK.

[ILLMAS]

Office Home and Business 2013 $220 Amazon

[mcb39]

Office Home and Student 2007.  Acquired the same way Catherine said.

 

 

That''s the one that I have, but I have to confess that I really like Microsoft Word for Windows much better.  Maybe because that is what I learned on.  A nice inexpensive program that has Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Database modules.

[frazzled]

I purchased new computers last year. I am trying out OpenOffice - free and acceptable for small business use. So far, it has been an adjustment, but doable.  If i get too frustrated with it, I will just fire up the old computer and use Office.

[Jack from Ohio]

That''s the one that I have, but I have to confess that I really like Microsoft Word for Windows much better.  Maybe because that is what I learned on.  A nice inexpensive program that has Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Database modules.

Office Home and Student had Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote and Visio viewer.

[PapaJoe]

Another vote for OpenOffice.  Been using it for years. Like Frazzled says, it's an adjustment.  But there are many things in OpenOffice that are better than Microsoft Office. You just have to get used to the differences.

[easytax]

Since this is for the "client", might I suggest that you use the Microsoft (MS) programs mentioned.

 

Office 2010 is available as stated on ebay, etc. at nominal pricing.

 

Open Office and other UNIX type things work well (sometimes even better) than Microsoft but given the "industry" NORMAL is MS, then save the client (and yourself extra questions from the client on "how does this work differently, etc.) the time to learn and use something NOT EVERYBODY else uses (Open Office, etc.) . Unless of course, you are also their IT professional and want those extra questions, billable times, etc.

[FreedomTaxed]

We use OpenOffice for general office applications, Chrome for the browser (although MSIE is still loaded and could be used), and VueMinder for our scheduler. All on Windows 7 Pro 64 machines, running workgrouped with a Windows Server 2012 Essentials machine (which is overkill).

 

One of our experienced office-skilled people hates OO, but he's an Apple person anyway, so he's less to me than a worm in the dust. OK, I kid, I kid, but other than Mr Office Militant, our use of OO is perfectly fine, and you can't beat the price. I've been able to craft very usable spreadsheets and documents and labels. The only real trouble I've had was in performing a mailmerge to print out almost 3000 labels for a mailing campaign. That mailmerge was very frustrating since in using one of the Avery templates I wasn't able to line up the addresses on the labels professionally; each label was a tiny bit off so that by the bottom label, text was printing off the edge of the label. I fiddle-fixed it so that it barely got all the labels in place on each page. Dunno what the heck the problem was, but fine control of label placement to the 1/100th of the inch was available but didn't work correctly; hence, tweak tweak tweak tweak PRINNNNNNNT, thank god that's over.

Edited January 23, 2015 by FreedomTaxed