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LindaH

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I've started getting messages on my computer when I open an Office 365 file that I need to renew by May 23 in order to "keep using your Office applications without interruption." It'll cost me $99.99 per year for the Home edition or $69.99 per year for the Personal edition, money I'd rather not pay.

 

So what happens if I don't renew? Will my Office files quit working, or will the program simply not be updated anymore?

 

 

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
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I have Open Office. However, when I open a file (word processing, mainly, with Open Office), it opens using Office 365!

 

Downloading or using a different word processing and spreadsheet program doesn't help me with my original question...come May 24th, are all my files that I've used Office 365 for going to stop working?

 

If they will, then I'll re-do all those files with a different word processing and spreadsheet program, because I'm not paying an annual fee to Microsoft in order to use their program.

 

If all that will happen is that the program doesn't receive updates, then I'm not going to worry about it.

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
2011 Kia Soul

 

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I have been paying the monthly for a while. I don't notice that I use office much at all. Had an old 2003 version on all my other computers but didn't load it on the WIndows 10. I'm going to cancel my subscription and see what happens.

 

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Linda,

 

This is a quote from the Microsoft FAQ on Office 365 and may answer your question.

 

What happens when my subscription ends? How can I continue to work with my documents?

As the expiration date approaches, you will receive notifications in the Office applications and via email, alerting you to the upcoming expiration. If you choose to let your subscription expire, the Office software applications enter read-only mode, which means that you can view or print documents, but you can’t create new documents or edit existing documents.

To return to full Office functionality, you can purchase a new version of Office by visiting www.office365.com or any participating retailer. You could also return to full functionality using an older version of Office, or you can use Office Online for free for basic editing.

 

Dave K.

 

Here's the address for the FAQ on Office 365: https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-office-for-home-and-school-faq

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Thanks, Dave.

 

Read-only isn't going to cut it for me, so I'm either going to have to convert all my Office word processing and spreadsheet files over to another program or I could try installing an old Office program I have on CD (Student and Teacher Edition 2003) and see if it works on my Windows 8.1 machine.

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
2011 Kia Soul

 

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Thanks, Dave.

 

Read-only isn't going to cut it for me, so I'm either going to have to convert all my Office word processing and spreadsheet files over to another program or I could try installing an old Office program I have on CD (Student and Teacher Edition 2003) and see if it works on my Windows 8.1 machine.

 

I'm not sure exactly what you're doing, but Open Office will run MS Office documents seamlessly. No conversion necessary.

Everybody wanna hear the truth, but everybody tell a lie.  Everybody wanna go to Heaven, but nobody want to die.  Albert King

 

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For us the subscription Office 365 Home plan was a boon for us. We need at least the Professional level. When Office was a one-time charge, we would push about 4-5 years before an upgrade that would cost us in the $300 range. But with 4 PC's we were spending about $300 a year.

 

With Subscription Office 365 Home costs us $100 a year and that covers 5 PCs. And this is the full package, including Access, Power Point, Outlook.

 

We tried the open systems but there is nothing like Power Point. The database applications don't integrate like Access , Word and Excel.

 

If all you need is a word processor and a spreadsheet, then the open systems are okay. But a blanket statement that the open systems are just as good as Office just doesn't make it.

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You can also purchase the regular Office Suite for one computer and own it instead of 365 where you have to pay a monthly or yearly subscription. The regular price for Home and Student is $149 off the shelf. Which includes Word, Excel, power point, and One Note. I'm sure you can get it a little cheaper somewhere. But again you will own it.

 

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If all you need is a word processor and a spreadsheet, then the open systems are okay. But a blanket statement that the open systems are just as good as Office just doesn't make it.

 

Who made that blanket statement? I totally agree with your statement above.

 

All Linda mentioned were word processing and spreadsheet documents.

 

Everybody wanna hear the truth, but everybody tell a lie.  Everybody wanna go to Heaven, but nobody want to die.  Albert King

 

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Linda,

Libre Office is looking very good with their most recent version. Unless you have some specific needs Libre should do you fine, just download/store all your files locally on your system, and start opening them with Libre Office.

 

Rather than get confused about one faction over another just download it here: http://www.libreoffice.org/ Then try opening and making docs and spreadsheets. You just select how you want to save each doc as Office or Libre or whatever files.

 

Libre Office was a fork from Open Office, IMO is better, and though I might try Office 365, I prefer my docs local. I am still running Office 2010 Home and Biz. My wife and I both use Outlook 2010 for email.

RV/Derek
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Retired AF 1971-1998


When you see a worthy man, endeavor to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, look inside yourself. - Confucius

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ... Voltaire

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How 'bout this:

I have an older version of Office that fills my requirements. When I upgraded to Windows 10, any e-mail I received now with an attached file with a .DOC extension cannot be opened. A pop up says that I must buy Office to open that file. Since I already own a copy (came with the Windows 7 machine) I do not want to buy another version. What can a cheepo operator do/

Any advice appreciated.

Catfish

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How 'bout this:

I have an older version of Office that fills my requirements. When I upgraded to Windows 10, any e-mail I received now with an attached file with a .DOC extension cannot be opened. A pop up says that I must buy Office to open that file. Since I already own a copy (came with the Windows 7 machine) I do not want to buy another version. What can a cheepo operator do/

Any advice appreciated.

Catfish

 

Read post #2 and post #12. Take your choice, both are free and both will work with Office files.

Everybody wanna hear the truth, but everybody tell a lie.  Everybody wanna go to Heaven, but nobody want to die.  Albert King

 

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Much as I hated to do it, my wife and I went with the Office 365 setup, too.

 

I was a pretty die-hard Open Office user for a long time. And she was using an aging Microsoft Office suite at home and a more updated version at work. Passing around documents, it became a bit of a pain at times. For instance, Word docs that were supposed to be the same from one program to another, would have punctuation not quite in the right places, paragraph breaks in the wrong places, page layouts not quite the same, occasionally a doc from the newer version wouldn't open in the older, that kind of thing. Sure, we could fix it all and make it work. But we just didn't feel like having to tweak so much. Now that we're all on the same Office 365, it all seems to work as it should, at least so far.

 

FWIW, we don't generally store everything on the cloud. The programs are all installed on our computers and we do not have to be connected to the internet to use the programs. We keep most of our documents locally, on our own computers, and tend to pass them around via memory stick more than anything else (probably more out of habit).

 

There may come a time when the open source software will work fine for us again. I hope so. But for now, we figured that we can have up to 5 of us using the up to date software for $10/mo. If we had to buy even 2 copies of the full version of MS Office, we'd spend as much as what, six years of Office 365? Plus, in six years, we'd be using up to date / latest versions of MS Office, not six year old versions.

 

Anyway, for us, it made sense to go with the 365. For someone else, it may not make sense. We'll continue to evaluate whether it's a good deal for us and when it's not, we'll change. :)

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j2 catfish,

What version of Office? Older version could Office 95, 98, XP, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013. Different solutions but if 2003 or earlier, just get Libre Office or pony up because the unsupported versions no longer get security updates. I get office security updates for 2010 every month. I'll wait until 2020 when it is no longer supported to make a decision for what.

 

Chirakawa, you really ought to give Libre a try.

RV/Derek
http://www.rvroadie.com Email on the bottom of my website page.
Retired AF 1971-1998


When you see a worthy man, endeavor to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, look inside yourself. - Confucius

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ... Voltaire

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chirakawa, on 09 May 2016 - 3:28 PM, said:

 

I'm not sure exactly what you're doing, but Open Office will run MS Office documents seamlessly. No conversion necessary.

 

My problem with Open Office is that files I've created using it open in Office 365! I don't know why that is, but I'm assuming that it's going to cause a problem once 365 stops working.

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
2011 Kia Soul

 

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If all you need is a word processor and a spreadsheet, then the open systems are okay.

 

Yes, that's all I need. I've never used, nor do I have any use for, Power Point or all the other stuff that comes with Office 365.

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
2011 Kia Soul

 

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Libre Office is looking very good with their most recent version.

 

Thanks, Derek, I may give that a try. Hopefully, it won't open files in Office 365 like Open Office does!

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
2011 Kia Soul

 

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My problem with Open Office is that files I've created using it open in Office 365! I don't know why that is, but I'm assuming that it's going to cause a problem once 365 stops working.

 

I am using Windows 7, can't speak for anything later. Windows 7 allows me to choose which program I use to open a particular file type. This is found under Control Panel, Default Programs, Associate a File Type with a Program.

 

On earlier versions, I could right click on a file, then choose Open With to determine which program to use. Also, if I boot a program, then open the file, it would use that program to open it.

 

Edit: Also, you can probably uninstall MS Office 365 if you're not going to be using it.

Everybody wanna hear the truth, but everybody tell a lie.  Everybody wanna go to Heaven, but nobody want to die.  Albert King

 

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Linda,

Not having used Office 365 I can't answer directly. But here is a really in depth feature comparison between MS Office 2016 and Libre Office 5.1 (The current version)

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_LibreOffice_-_Microsoft_Office

 

Now here is a new one on me, Libre Office (LO) is now doing an Open Office 365. Linda, you would be best to evaluate it since you already use Office 365. It is in beta but works. The main website is here: https://open365.io/ They give you 20GB of free online storage with the free program??

 

Here is a great article about Open Office 365 and video about it worth watching if you can stream somewhere: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/open365-free-office-365-spotify-hacked-tech-news-digest/

 

I would download the main local LO and right click on a 365 doc and "open with" and select Libre Office then see if it allows opening with LO, or Open Office 365. Once you determine which you will use you can then set it as the default to open all selected file types for each LO equivalent.

 

Just remember not to click on make it your default on any test Office sub until you've tried it enough to feel comfortable with it. That means that your every opening will involve right clicking on it and selection "Open With," each time until you make it the default.

 

I can't say one way or the other about this but it sure surprised me today when I went looking for the compatibility with Office 365 files.

 

Please let me know what you find and decide on.

RV/Derek
http://www.rvroadie.com Email on the bottom of my website page.
Retired AF 1971-1998


When you see a worthy man, endeavor to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, look inside yourself. - Confucius

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ... Voltaire

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You can also purchase the regular Office Suite for one computer and own it instead of 365 where you have to pay a monthly or yearly subscription. The regular price for Home and Student is $149 off the shelf. Which includes Word, Excel, power point, and One Note. I'm sure you can get it a little cheaper somewhere. But again you will own it.

 

James

I bought mine a few years ago and did not get disks just a key card that required me to download a couple of gigabytes. I don't see anything other than the pc key card on Amazon - maybe somewhere else? That is a lot of download data use for many full timers.

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Linda,

It sounds like you have 365 set as your "default" program for your word processor and spreadsheet files. If so, whenever you try to open one of those files, it will always use 365 unless (1) you open the alternate program such as Libra Office FIRST and then open the file you want to edit or view from within Libra Office or (2) go into your "settings" and change the default program for the file types you want to use Libra Office for.

 

Lenp

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