On 17-Aug-2019 12:28 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
GS wrote:
So if you don't have Excel now then what are you using for
spreadsheets?
LibreOffice Calc. However, I'm finding finding functions in it a lot
harder to find than I thought. Too often I'll finally find what I'm
looking for and wonder why the hell it was buried over there. There's
not really a migration to Calc. You have to learn it anew. Only little
of what I learned in Excel comes forward to Calc other than some very
basic boob stuff. Excel's ribbon logic is more intelligent, too.
But LibreOffice is free. I tried Kinsoft's Office Suite awhile back,
but after a few months of using it they turned it into adwa printouts
got watermarked, many features got disabled after a 30-day trial period
(and why many reviews were glowing because those authors didn't test
after the trial period), tables couldn't be sorted in docs (not even in
the payware version). I tried Softmaker's FreeOffice, but soon ran into
its limitations. While Excel and LibreOffic Calc show the spreadsheets
how I expect (from Excel), the other suites didn't visually render them
the same. Still, I'm getting weary of having to go online to search on
how to do something in Calc that I can find a lot faster in Excel (for
what I've used before but also for functions that I've never used
before). Of course, all those free/paid alternate office suites lack an
e-mail client, calendering, and contacts, so I was looking at Outlook
alternatives, too, like EssentialPIM and em Client. I thought the free
eM Client was good (if you have less than 2 accounts, but I have more)
until it royally ****ed up my contacts both locally and on the server
(massive duplicates). EPIM used to limit to just 2 accounts max, but
https://www.essentialpim.com/pc-version/pro-vs-free indicates they
lifted that restriction.
While MS Office 365 is payware, I wouldn't pay the $99/year that
Microsoft wants. I got it a lot cheaper at eBay at $33/year, but only
after doing lots of watching and research to find legit sellers there.
Now that some other of my family are considering dumping their WinXP PCs
and moving up to Win10 along with upgrading to much newer versions of MS
Office, and with Office 365 doling out 5 seats per licence, the cost per
user is a lot cheaper, so I might go back to Office 365. Plus I find
the Win10 apps for Mail, Calendar, and Contacts to be pathetic. I can
manage using the Mail WinRT/UWP app, but I can't view the raw source of
an e-mail, so I have to use their webmail client for that (and I look at
the headers often enough that I want that feature). Calendar is okay
but limited on how long to sleep after a reminder shows up, plus I've
encountered problems with no notification at the reminder time. Their
People app is really bad.
By the time I pay for a 3rd party Pro office suite and EPIM Pro, it's
getting close to the price of Office 365, but for just the 1-year
subscription cost versus repaying every year for the subscription
(compared to repaying every 1 to 3 years for the next major verison
update of the 3rd party non-subscriptionware).
I'm not financially throttled, so paying for software isn't some major
aversion to me. I'll keep using LibreOffice for another 5, or more,
months to give it fleshing out to see if I'll stick with it. I did that
with Thunderbird: trialed it for 6 months as my only e-mail client but
dumped it after 6 months and went back to MS Outlook. For me, free is
nice but not essential.
And, while we're on the subject of alternatives for Excel, the killer
for me is the need for macros - based on Excel's visual basic for
applications. I've been using Excel in its various incarnations for over
20 years and practically every spreadsheet I use has a home-grown
programming function associated with it.Â* As far as I'm aware, none of
the alternative spreadsheets, free or paid for, allows the import of
Excel macros.