Excel 365 (Page 2): I subscribe to Office 365 Home for $100/year and am very happy with it. This includes the premium version of Excel, Word, Power Point, Outlook & One Note (plus...

rdarlington43 Loc: Charlotte, NC

I subscribe to Office 365 Home for $100/year and am very happy with it. This includes the premium version of Excel, Word, Power Point, Outlook & One Note (plus Publisher & Access if you use a PC) for up to 6 people. My wife and I can access all of our files via One Drive using our laptop, iPads & iPhones. It also includes cloud backup with One Drive(1 T per person) plus Skype. Every couple of weeks I get all of their updates.
Perfect? Probably not but serves our needs very well. You can go to Microsoft.com and there are charts that compare all of their options.

cbabcock

Delderby wrote:

Before you decide which way to go, I recommend you try Libre Office, which is compatible and downloads for free. Donations are asked for. I know of more than one Brit corporation that use it. For me it is a superior office suite.

I use Libre Office now. You can save documents and spreadsheets as Microsoft docs or sheets if you like, so that you can send or share with someone who uses MS products and they can open them. I get frustrated with MS Word because of all the formatting it wants to do. Libre has all the tools I need, and is by no means bare bones. I too think it is superior!

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

dpullum wrote:

B CAUTION OLD MAN'S RANT /B br Virtue and vice o... (show quote)

It seems that you were too young to remember Lotus 123 (for DOS and later for WIN). Lotus was generally preferred to Excel or QuatroPro and I dont know why Lotus lost it's way, except that IBM seemed to lose out heavily all the way round when the greed of Microsoft started to take the world by storm.

rdarlington43 Loc: Charlotte, NC

I remember Lotus 123 very well. Ran my first sports betting program from a Lotus 123 spreadsheet starting in about 1984! Sometime in the 1990's converted to Excel.

df61743 Loc: Corpus Christi, TX

VisiCalc preceded Lotus 123. In fact, it preceded them all, and was my introduction to spreadsheets.

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for the Apple II by VisiCorp. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool, prompting IBM to introduce the IBM PC two years later.

Stan Gould Loc: La Crosse, Wisconsin

Maybe a copy of Lotus 123 can be found?

tuatara Loc: Orig. NZ - currently SF area

SteveR wrote:

What do you mean by local version. Previously I had what was called MS Office Pro, and the version of Excel that came with that was perfect. The one that comes with the generic MS Office is not. For instance, on Pro, I could copy the format of one file without the data to make a new file. On the generic Office version, you can't do that.

The version of excel you have must be rather old,you have been able to create new empty but formatted worksheet from exiting worksheets for a while.

I agree with others who say try OpenOffice, I have used it many times, and I think it an excellent programme. I however use Office 365 personal $US70.00 per year, and although I mainly use excel and word, the thing that sold me on Office 365 over OpenOffice is the TB of OneDrive storage that come with it.

billmck Loc: Central KY

df61743 wrote:

VisiCalc preceded Lotus 123. In fact, it preceded them all, and was my introduction to spreadsheets.

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for the Apple II by VisiCorp. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool, prompting IBM to introduce the IBM PC two years later.

I got VisiCalc when I purchased my first IBM PC in 1982, and it made the PC a real business tool for me. I later migrated to Lotus 1-2-3 and then Excel (MS Office.)

billmck Loc: Central KY

SteveR wrote:

I am interested in upgrading my Excel Office to Ex... (show quote)

Microsoft has proliferated so many different versions of Office (Office Home, Office Personal, Office Home & Student, Office Professional, etc.) that it's hard to match up the available options with what you actually want. The upside to getting the "365" version is that since it's a subscription, they continually make updates available for the subscription price they charge for the version you select. If you buy the "local" or CD-based copy, you're stuck with buying the later version if it's got capabilities you want/need. If you're a Mac user, there are other differences.

I purchased a CD copy of Office 2016 for my Mac, and I doubt that I'll ever need to upgrade that as long as I'm content to use the local copy on my home computer only.

Tseni

SteveR wrote:

I am interested in upgrading my Excel Office to Ex... (show quote)

Try Libre Office! It's free, and I prefer its spreadsheet to more recent versions of Excel. If you know your way around Excel, you will have no learning curve - it functions almost the same. It will read any Excel file. You can change the default file extension for saving to "xlsx". Before you commit to a subscription (or even a purchase), please take a look at Libre Office: https://www.libreoffice.org/ .

Jon_Armitage Loc: Holmfirth, West Yorkshire

Another vote for LibreOffice from me. It is essentially the same as OpenOffice (the same source code base) but development seems to be more active. The spreadsheet component seems to be fully compatible with MS Office documents, sometimes imported Word documents need a bit of reformatting.

Try both, if you don't like them you can bin them, and it costs you nothing but a bit of time.

SteveFranz Loc: Durham, NC

Stan Gould wrote:

Maybe a copy of Lotus 123 can be found?

I still have some copies of Lotus Smart Suite Millennium (but don't use them anymore). Lotus is no longer compatible with Windows, but there is a conversion program out their. I converted all the Lotus files I had, and am now using the free program Libre Office.

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Jon_Armitage wrote:

Another vote for LibreOffice from me. It is essentially the same as OpenOffice (the same source code base) but development seems to be more active. The spreadsheet component seems to be fully compatible with MS Office documents, sometimes imported Word documents need a bit of reformatting.

Try both, if you don't like them you can bin them, and it costs you nothing but a bit of time.

I am a past user of OpenOffice. It never seemed 100% compatible, although it would open Excel files.
Libre Office on the other hand seems to be 100% compatible, and its facilities and layout are more to my liking than Excel, and easier to use.

PhilS

Open Office is not 100% compatible with MS. There are just enough differences in the UI to make using it a frustrating exercise.

johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle

PhilS wrote:

Open Office is not 100% compatible with MS. There are just enough differences in the UI to make using it a frustrating exercise.

I think they were discussing the compatibility with the file formats, which Open Office/Libre Office can open and save as all M$ formats.