Substitute for using Microsoft Office: Upgraded from Sierra to Catalina and have lost Microsoft Office in the process. Been trying without success to sign in and nothing but trouble.

hj Loc: Florida

Upgraded from Sierra to Catalina and have lost Microsoft Office in the process. Been trying without success to sign in and nothing but trouble. Can anyone recommend a substitute "office bundle" that will create new documents but still open existing Microsoft word documents, such as Apache OpenOffice? I don't want to buy Microsoft Office again at their exorbitant prices. There are a number of office suites available, so which would you recommend for simple home ease of use replacing Microsoft Office.

fjdarling Loc: Mesa, Arizona, USA

LibreOffice and OpenOffice are some of the alternatives. I'll add others if I can remember them. When you evaluate them, try to determine if they will read and operate on the latest versions of Office files. In the past, some Office alternative applications couldn't.

johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle

fjdarling wrote:

LibreOffice and OpenOffice are some of the alternatives. I'll add others if I can remember them. When you evaluate them, try to determine if they will read and operate on the latest versions of Office files. In the past, some Office alternative applications couldn't.

I started with OpenOffice and then migrated to LibreOffice. It's all I run on my linux distros and I haven't run into any issues opening/saving in M$ Office formats (docx,xlsx, etc...). I'm sure there are some limitations, but I haven't come across them in over 10 years.

fjdarling Loc: Mesa, Arizona, USA

WPS Office is another option. OpenOffice is now Apache OpenOffice. Note that some of the alternatives are totally free while some have only free trials.

imagerybox Loc: Elgin, IL

Won't Pages handle most of what you want to do? Of course I'm still using MS 2008, but have downloaded Pages for when I do upgrade from High Sierra.

OleMe Loc: Montgomery Co., MD

https://www.libreoffice.org/ is THE way to go. I've been using it for years. Apache version is not well maintained. I've tried the others. Be sure to download help and dictionary files if not included.

jcryan Loc: Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic

I also recommend LibreOffice. There are some limitations and MS Office advanced concepts that are not fully implemented in LibreOffice, but most have workarounds. If you are a standard user that is not pushing the envelope beyond basic document and spreadsheet usage LibreOffice will do everything you need.

Manglesphoto Loc: 70 miles south of St.Louis

hj wrote:

Upgraded from Sierra to Catalina and have lost Mic... (show quote)

I believe you have "Pages"& "Numbers" so far they both work with out any real problems

DAN Phillips Loc: Graysville, GA

I bought a used Windows 7 to get Office. it works great.

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Libre Office

David Martin Loc: Cary, NC

I transitioned from Microsoft Office to Pages, Numbers, Keynote. You already have these, they're free and updates are free. The learning curve is easy, and they will produce the documents you want. You can even save files in Microsoft format, for example *.doc or *.docx rather than *.pages.

jgudpns Loc: Pensacola, FL

Our company (with over 8k employees) dumped Office, and went to Google. Before I retired, I found that it handled everything that I needed for spreadsheets, word docs, and powerpoint type stuff. All you need it a google account (free). All can ready Office files

I use Libre office for stuff I don't want google to store....

Bayou

jcryan wrote:

I also recommend LibreOffice. There are some limitations and MS Office advanced concepts that are not fully implemented in LibreOffice, but most have workarounds. If you are a standard user that is not pushing the envelope beyond basic document and spreadsheet usage LibreOffice will do everything you need.

Jimmy T Loc: Virginia

David Martin wrote:

I transitioned from Microsoft Office to Pages, Numbers, Keynote. You already have these, they're free and updates are free. The learning curve is easy, and they will produce the documents you want. You can even save files in Microsoft format, for example *.doc or *.docx rather than *.pages.

I concur with David.
I have used Libre Office for three years with no issues at all.
I found it to be VERY intuitive.
A great deal of the commands/shortcuts that I normally use are the same.
Smile,
JimmyT Sends

hj Loc: Florida

WOW - I downloaded Libre Office and have only worked with text but so far I'm very impressed. Thanks to everyone who has responded.