Reverend Conehead
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I'll spare you the gory long laundry list of why I strongly dislike Microsoft Office starting with the 2007 version. Prior to that, I used MS Office daily from the '97 version through the XP one. I skipped the '03 version because I felt I really didn't need it, not that it was awful or anything. However, when the '07 version came out, I went, "Blech!" I felt they made it cooler looking, but much harder to use.
Since '07 to late last year, I just kept using the XP version of MS Office. It did what I needed. It didn't make any sense to use a version I was not happy with. Finally, at the end of last year, I tried LibreOffice. It was a free download. You can't argue with that price. I had wondered if I would feel like features were missing, but I don't feel that way at all. I write a lot. I write in English, German, and French because learning foreign languages is something important to me. I also help others to learn English. I write science fiction novels and plays, and I do some nonfiction writing. So far LibreOffice Writer is meeting my writing needs perfectly fine. It's highly customizable, which is something important to me. It reads all my old MS Word and Excel files flawlessly.
My spreadsheet needs are dirt simple. I usually just add up numbers in currency format for doing budgeting. Sometimes I also subtract, multiply, and divide, but I don't do anything super complex. Thus far LO Calc is handling that every bit as well as Excel ever did for me.
Here's a screenshot of my LO Writer:
http://*************/f/845/frenchgermantoolbars.gif/
http://*************/f/845/frenchgermantoolbars.gif
(In case that doesn't work, a direct link:
http://*************/f/845/frenchgermantoolbars.gif/
You'll see in the upper right an icon that's half an American flag and half a British one. That's a customization that I put in myself. If you click on that, it sets the spell checking to English for whatever paragraph you're in. I also put in the hot key Ctrl+Alt+E to run that. Then the icon that looks like a French flag (as you probably have guessed) lets the spell checker to check spelling in French for that paragraph (as does the Ctrl+Alt+F hot key). And the German flag – you can certainly guess what that's for. Then on the left side of the screen you can see two special toolbars I made, one for special French characters and another for special German ones. I just click on the character that I want and it goes into my document. Each of these characters also. All these customizations have made writing in other languages and switching from one language to another way easier than it would have been otherwise.
I recognize that not everyone has the same computing needs as I do. Some people may like the MS Office Ribbon interface that I dislike so much. However, when something else is available that I like better and doesn't cost any money, it's a no-brainer that I should go with that. Why would I pay hundreds of dollars for a set of programs that I don't like?
LibreOffice is certainly the right choice for me. I'm curious if anyone else here uses it.
Since '07 to late last year, I just kept using the XP version of MS Office. It did what I needed. It didn't make any sense to use a version I was not happy with. Finally, at the end of last year, I tried LibreOffice. It was a free download. You can't argue with that price. I had wondered if I would feel like features were missing, but I don't feel that way at all. I write a lot. I write in English, German, and French because learning foreign languages is something important to me. I also help others to learn English. I write science fiction novels and plays, and I do some nonfiction writing. So far LibreOffice Writer is meeting my writing needs perfectly fine. It's highly customizable, which is something important to me. It reads all my old MS Word and Excel files flawlessly.
My spreadsheet needs are dirt simple. I usually just add up numbers in currency format for doing budgeting. Sometimes I also subtract, multiply, and divide, but I don't do anything super complex. Thus far LO Calc is handling that every bit as well as Excel ever did for me.
Here's a screenshot of my LO Writer:
http://*************/f/845/frenchgermantoolbars.gif/
http://*************/f/845/frenchgermantoolbars.gif
(In case that doesn't work, a direct link:
http://*************/f/845/frenchgermantoolbars.gif/
You'll see in the upper right an icon that's half an American flag and half a British one. That's a customization that I put in myself. If you click on that, it sets the spell checking to English for whatever paragraph you're in. I also put in the hot key Ctrl+Alt+E to run that. Then the icon that looks like a French flag (as you probably have guessed) lets the spell checker to check spelling in French for that paragraph (as does the Ctrl+Alt+F hot key). And the German flag – you can certainly guess what that's for. Then on the left side of the screen you can see two special toolbars I made, one for special French characters and another for special German ones. I just click on the character that I want and it goes into my document. Each of these characters also. All these customizations have made writing in other languages and switching from one language to another way easier than it would have been otherwise.
I recognize that not everyone has the same computing needs as I do. Some people may like the MS Office Ribbon interface that I dislike so much. However, when something else is available that I like better and doesn't cost any money, it's a no-brainer that I should go with that. Why would I pay hundreds of dollars for a set of programs that I don't like?
LibreOffice is certainly the right choice for me. I'm curious if anyone else here uses it.
