Buying Microsoft Word
Birdcage
Posts: 6,499 Forum Member
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Hi,
I need to get Microsoft word and have a few questions if anyone can help please.
a) Can I purchase this product without Office?
b) Can it be brought on a disc?
c) Does it matter which version I buy (eg say the 2007 version) - would any version still 'acknowledge' a document typed on a more recent version?
The reason I want Word is that I have lots of different documents on this pc and another older pc which all need bringing together - I have some documents that I've saved which can't be read with Wordpad or Paint and it's all very messy, so I just want to get some cohesion, have all documents filed under the same programme and bring everything up to date.
I need to get Microsoft word and have a few questions if anyone can help please.
a) Can I purchase this product without Office?
b) Can it be brought on a disc?
c) Does it matter which version I buy (eg say the 2007 version) - would any version still 'acknowledge' a document typed on a more recent version?
The reason I want Word is that I have lots of different documents on this pc and another older pc which all need bringing together - I have some documents that I've saved which can't be read with Wordpad or Paint and it's all very messy, so I just want to get some cohesion, have all documents filed under the same programme and bring everything up to date.
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As an alternative have you considered a free office suite such as LibreOffice? The word processor in that has pretty good compatibility with Word. I have certainly not found a Word document it won't read, though that's not to say such a thing doesn't exist.
Might be worth trying and as it's free won't have cost you anything, other than a bit of time downloading and installing it, if you find you can't live with it.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msuk/en_GB/pdp/Word-2013/productID.260257700
Far better to do as suggested above and try Libre Office
http://www.libreoffice.org/discover/libreoffice/
Not anymore no. You normally get a product key and a link to download the software from the MS website.
Alternatively there is Office 365 which is a subscription to a website.
The latest versions will happily read documents made in previous versions and will still save to regular .doc format if required (rather than the newer .docx format)
One thing you may wish to take into account is that if the PC is running either XP or Vista then the very latest version (2013) will not work. Office 2010 is the latest version that will run on these platforms. Since this is no longer available officially you may have trouble picking it up.
As others have mentioned there are free alternatives to consider too. Another that is worth looking at is Office Starter 2010 which is cut down versions of MS Word and Excel 2010 free for home users.
That's probably the cheapest one off way of getting Office/Word currently (ca. £100). Although they understandably don't publicise it now, the free, ad-supported Microsoft Office Starter Edition 2010 is still available from some software repositories. As for other free alternatives, my own favourite is FreeOffice here: http://www.freeoffice.com/ (available for both Windows and Linux).
Sorry about hijacking this thread.
I've been told by work that I have to use MS Word for my documents (no alternatives) and I can't seem to fathom what to get. What is the subscription? Can you not just buy Word outright? I would need it for a PC and a laptop running Windows 7.
Also, can I run 2 versions of Word on the same computer?
Thanks
Do you have to use Word or just Word format files?
If you need to buy it, you can get Office365 (which is just an annual subscription to the software) for £61 for 5 PCs. Otherwise, Word is £93 for 1 user install.
Why would you want two versions on the same PC?
So for Office 365, I would have to pay £61 a year? Yikes!!
I'd like to versions of Word because I'm very fond of my Word 2003 but I have to use a newer version for work.
obviously with a good pc you could perhaps use a vm just for work stuff but like anything it can become messy
I suspect that what your work requires are documents IN THE WORD FORMAT, i.e. .doc or .docx format.
How you get that is not really for your employer to dictate unless he is prepared to buy you a copy of the approved version of Microsoft Word.
As you have a fondness for Word 2003, many do, you will find that LibreOffice Writer, a part of the free LibreOffice Suite will be very familiar to you and will produce documents in the .doc and .docx format and many others beside.
In practical terms I urge you to try this out before you spend any of your own money on software that you do not need.
The entire LibreOffice can be downloaded from here ...
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/
My last company I worked for also used free software, plus it seems Google's ecosystem of using Google Drive for sharing documents seems to be standard with every company we deal with.
Free Office software makes sense, and those who actively seek to buy Microsoft's products should really take note of what's happening in the real world of business.
Mark
I recently paid for office 365, though, and it really has some nice features.
Don't forget Office 2003 is just as EOL dead as Windows XP. It might have slipped under a lot of people's radar, whereas most XP diestupids are just being bloody minded.
Libre Office +1 for me, there are incompatibilities, just depends how hard you look