i've been using libreoffice for a while.

before that, openoffice.

I have been using Office 2010 since it was released. It still does the job for me.


Is Open Office still supported?

If you are a business user, you're not forced, but presented with compatibility issues by not using the software your customers are using. I've been all through this, and there is no 100% compatibility. We had to keep upgrading the desktops on the way.
365 has been much better for us.

It's not a problem for business users.

Home users shouldn't need to go the route of 365 as there are alternatives. The small business user should be fine, too, unless they need compatibility.

Never used it at all - ever - if needed I used Open Office.

LibreOffice forever... until they screw up, and someone else replace them, like what happened with OpenOffice, OwnCloud, etc...

There's good products out there, both Win and 'Nix

Fortunately the 'Nix stuff has been open and will probably remain that way for some time to some.

For the rest who started (and still use) Win the times have changed, just as the Adobe folks learned not too long ago (I still run PS5 for that reason!)

As for the Home 365 being "incompatible" my resolution to that has always been: "Send it in RTF, we don't do doc or docx." There is a DIFFERENT reason for doing that in that malicious macros can't be easily passed and RTF is cross platform everywhere. OR send TXT!

I fall into that category of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and the other category of "buy once and use forever". Subscriptions are nothing more than a freaking monthly bill like some folks pay for cable, cell phones, etc ... Paying for the internet and my electric bill are painful enough.

As for the Home 365 being "incompatible" my resolution to that has always been: "Send it in RTF, we don't do doc or docx." There is a DIFFERENT reason for doing that in that malicious macros can't be easily passed and RTF is cross platform everywhere. OR send TXT!

Fine for home use, but that won't work when dealing with corporate clients.

For a few years, in the early 2000s , I also worked for a multinational company, and the memo was to use open standards (and open source) for file exchanges, internally, and with external partners, as well as for archiving for not being stuck with property formats and their uncertain future. For text stuff, it was RTF we had to use.

After seeing Phranque's post I downloaded LibreOffice and it looks to me that I could use this without ever missing MS Office.

Fine for home use, but that won't work when dealing with corporate clients.

Chuckles. Corporate clients have to deal with ME.

TXT and RTF remain the formats cross platform. Until that changes I don't see any future problems in data/txt exchange. :)

The OP was about the obvious MS nudge into subscription versions of office.

@BeeDeeDubbleU: LibreOffice is compelling. Good choice for many!

If you have stand-alone Microsoft Office products, back up your product codes and make sure you don't lose them. Also not a bad idea to back-up CD/DVD/Downloads that contain them. Microsoft will not likely disable these products, but they will make it very difficult to find downloads. Activation may become an issue though.

These days unless a PC comes with an activated Office license I just go straight to LibreOffice. LibreOffice is compatible enough in most cases, but if you work with clients who are on Office then you're going to have to shell out the subscription fees. If you're working with anything that depends upon Office layout templates, macros, or formulas you're not going to have fun working between Office365/LibreOffice.

Good advice on maintaining current installs. Also prognostication that perhaps some day in the future authorization might not be there. (Does that suggest a hacker cottage industry? I don't know!)

Long and short, there are too many viable, reasonable, and often free, applications that will deal with "documents" that no one is really harmed, except those suckered into playing subscription (monthly billing) for a word processor, spreadsheet, etc.

As Microsoft Office is evolving, the doc/docx formats will too, and at some point, older versions of MS Office will no longer be able to read files created by Office 365 ... and this will serve as an argument to subscribe to be sure to have the latest version.

Plain old word processing, spreadsheet, or presentation files really aren't an issue for the individual or small business. When you get into an enterprise/business environment that relies on Office, and someone (for example) embeds an Excel spreadsheet into a PowerPoint and there's data being updated through that...then you're not going to be able to cleanly replicate that functionality with LibreOffice.

Which begs the question: How many webmasters utilize MS Office (any version) for site prep?

For most things I do WordPad or NotePad will do the job ... :)

(my html editor of choice is Notepad ++)

older versions of MS Office will no longer be able to read files created by Office 365

Least Common Denominator applies. Set the save as [default format] to Office 95/2003 and ALMOST ALL of the fancy formatting in common use is preserved.

ugh ... I still know people who manage their website with Word, and save docs as HTML. (http://www.example.com/My_Awesome_website.HTM)

I see corporate intranet websites that were originally made using Access. They incorporate files from the full Office suite, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access hosted on an outdated IIS server. The system works, but the people who originally made it either retired or left the company, and there's no motivation to reverse-engineer the thing to 'fix' what isn't broken. That sort of scenario may be extreme, but it does still exist. No way that could be replicated with LibreOffice...nor would you want to.

Personally I've been trying to work with VIM for text editing, but it's a bit of a learning curve to learn all the commands and features. Often a plain old text editor is the right tool for the job.

Bill,

As I was told a great many years ago by a fellow who worked in IT at a large Australian Corporation.

"Personally I wouldn't use bloated Microsoft products when there are far better FREE products around under GNU Licence - even sometimes voluntarily just pay a small one off registration fee.

BUT YOU WILL NEVER HAVE ANY OF THAT INSTALLED ON OUR SERVERS

Why not? I asked

"Because senior Corporate management automatically assume - and will not tolerate any discussion - that Microsoft is superior to anything on the planet. Also free stuff must obviously be inferior. The dearer the price, the better it must be".

That was back in the days before any senior corporate executive even had a PC and smart phones hadn't been invented..