Shall I upgrade from Office 2010?

[lilhasselhoffer]

I...am not a patient soul. I'm also not one to faff about, given that when I want to use Excel it's thousands of lines of processing, sorting, and active display.

As such, I pay for the licenses that don't require online sync. In my area...or areas might be more accurate...if you get a bad connection the backup functionality in newer versions of office sucks harder than a lemon enema.


What's good about the new versions? Less hoops. XLOOKUP is great...but in the past I managed to bastardize its functionality from VLOOKUP, HKOOKUP, and MATCH. It seems to be a bit more stable with larger data sets. It does try to convert .csv files with varying consistency. It also has a usually decent recovery option.

I started my preface with a lack of patience because libreoffice is...functional. It hasn't got the same features, it's visually harder to adapt to, and if you ever try to link sheets you'll need a cross and incense...because in my experience it's reading the wrong lines from the Necronomicon and inviting gremlins in.




Various resellers exist. I think I got my last copy from Good24 or something like that. Decent price, installed fine, no issues buying about 6 copies and installing them once each. I'd recommend as much...because while I see the value in their Office 365 program I've also dealt with it. It's all of the worst bits of connectivity issues and stability, with a phone-home that seems more aggressive than your average frothy mouthed pit bull side-eyeing the mailman.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

ROFLMAO, my initial post gets edited by a moderator to remove "pirating reference", but this shit P4 pointed me to perfectly fine.
Seriously @W1zzard, how can you do this? This is a dead serious question. Why do you promote illegal stuff on the website? You DO know these keys are not legal...

It is not illegal. Ive been using sites like this for years for my cd keys and never once had an issue. They authenticate with Microsoft and everything. If it were Illegal, Microsoft would be taking these sites down left and right and tech content creators would not be using these sites as sponsored content.

 

[Octopuss]

They ARE illegal. That's not the same as not working. IIRC, all those keys are generated from some volume licences that are meant for completely different purposes. Ten seconds on google will tell you exactly.
The bottom line is that at no point in history did legit Windows key ever cost ten bucks. Not even secondary one from reputable resellers where you get the physical case stickers in the mail.

 

[sepheronx]

I mean, if it was illegal, then the activators on github would be taken down, no?

 

[Octopuss]

The only reason I can think of is that Microsoft is well aware it's not worth the effort. And maybe not every company is so apeshit like Take Two when it comes to taking things down (GTA 5 mods, which aren't even related to money in any way).

 

[Frick]

They ARE illegal. That's not the same as not working. IIRC, all those keys are generated from some volume licences that are meant for completely different purposes. Ten seconds on goodle will tell you exactly.
The bottom line is that at no point in history did legit Windows key ever cost ten bucks. Not even secondary one from reputable resellers where you get the physical case stickers in the mail.

"Illegal" as in "depends on what exactly you buy, and maybe depends on where you live". It's against the ToS though, but that doesn't make it illegal, as in against the local law and something you can get prosecuted for. I'm purely talking about buying though. Kind of like how it was legal to download pirated media/software, but illegal to share it (in Sweden). The morality question is a personal one, but good on you for following your principles.

 

[AusWolf]

I used to use 2016 at work, but recently got upgraded to 365. All I noticed is that some menus are in different places, and the apps run a lot slower on our stupid little client terminals / Citrix boxes.

At home, I still have 2010 myself. Upgrading is totally worthless.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

Libre is definitely good enough until you get into some highly advanced minutiae of document editing, some of which are not present or work ever so slightly different (think specific spreadsheet functions or some niche, rarely used formatting). So yeah, sounds viable to me too.

I remember when I used it in 2014, created PDF for my resume to send to job applications. In the one I got hired, I actually caught a glimpse of the print. Word apparently interpreted Arial font I picked in original file to some Comic Sans looking like one Crap like that does not happen anymore, not on a regular basis at least.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Why would you pay for a personal subscription for O365?

There are definite advantages many find attractive. These include support and regular updates.

For me, I hate recurring bills - especially those involving my computing. I already spend a small fortune every month for Internet access.

 

[chrcoluk]

I am on office 365, and was pleasantly surprised by it.

I was dreading the upgrade itself thinking I would have big problems importing the pst etc. and did at same time as I moved from Win 8 to 10, but it all kind of just worked. What was the real surprise is whatever build is on 365 is so much faster than my old Office 2009 and a nice visual upgrade, however from a feature standpoint I dont think there is much of a difference, it e.g. still does not support TLS 1.3 regardless of server side support (apparently this is driven by that exchange doesnt yet support it), and I dont see any major differences relevant to me in functionality, but of course 2009 is long EOL, so I get security updates and what not now.

Now this financial decision was easy as I wanted the one drive cloud space that comes with it, not sure if I would have done it just for office. But you can still buy office standalone or use free solutions, my main reason was outlook as I dont like thunderbird and wasnt prepared to migrate my personal email to web mail access only. Although I am finding myself using the day to day email on web browser now, and just download to my client every so often to archive it locally.

 

[evernessince]

Libreoffice is crap, last time I tried was in 2010 and I only remember it was an imcompatible piece of shit. Wife can't use it at the very least, she needs 100% compatibility with Office for work stuff.

Libre has improved vastly since then. I think the bigger question is what kind of organization requires MS office for work and then doesn't provide a 365 subscription. It's vastly cheaper for a company to sub in bulk than it is for individual employees. Either the company is completely incompetent, penny pinching to a degree that shows zero care for employees, or MS Office really isn't as required as you are implying. A company should want to ensure it's employees have access to the tools they need to be productive. I only edit spreadsheet occasionally as part of my company role and they give everyone 365 regardless of if they touch a spreadsheet or not.

If you need MS Office and your work inexplicably doesn't provide it, you are going to have to pony up. There's nothing wrong with the newer versions, if you were fine with the ribbon bar in 2010 you are going to be fine with any changes in the latest version.

 

[erpguy53]

Libreoffice is crap, last time I tried was in 2010 and I only remember it was an imcompatible piece of shit.

many of us including me beg to differ on that

I've used Libreoffice (though it was not an up to date version) on one of my other PCs and it works fine

 

[Bill_Bright]

I have used Libreoffice in the past. My own experience with it has been good and uneventful (a good thing). I am aware of others, however, who ran into issues where the organization they were trying to submit papers to (notably schools) only accepted documents created by official MS Office products - which [conveniently ] they could purchase through the school bookstore. (At least the student discount prices were very attractive).

Other than buying Office, they could find someone who had MS Office, import their Libreoffice document into Word (or Excel) and do a "Save as" into a MS Office document. Then they could submit it to the school no problem.

 

[agent_x007]

If you want, there is always LTS versions (like Professional plus version).
Those are capable of working offline (with some on-line features missing/not enabled).

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

There are definite advantages many find attractive. These include support and regular updates.

For me, I hate recurring bills - especially those involving my computing. I already spend a small fortune every month for Internet access.

My point exactly. Everything is subscription based these days and it drives me nuts! Just give me stand alone versions. I already shell out enough money for bills and food every month.

 

[Wirko]

I will not go with Office 365. I do not trust the cloud for anything. I do not fear they will lose my files. It is more likely there will soon be 100s of copies of them floating around. My fear is my personal files and information will be compromised by a hacker - like what just happened with 23andMe or with Equifax a few years ago. So I too go for the stand-alone version of Office.

My opinion on this is the same (the only thing I'm willing to leave in the fog is my encrypted backups). When a former Microsoft MVP says this, I take note.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

They ARE illegal. That's not the same as not working. IIRC, all those keys are generated from some volume licences that are meant for completely different purposes. Ten seconds on google will tell you exactly.
The bottom line is that at no point in history did legit Windows key ever cost ten bucks. Not even secondary one from reputable resellers where you get the physical case stickers in the mail.

Enjoy your $125-$180 license key then.

 

[Wirko]

Stupid Excel seems to randomly not open links that are perfectly fine when manually pasted into the browser, so I thought maybe the program was too old today

Can you give an example of a link that Excel 2010 doesn't open? Is it a public URL? I can try it in Win 11 (also in Win XP, after triple-checking that the link is safe).

 

[Octopuss]

Yes it's a public link, and it only doesn't work sometimes. It's tied to specific eshop it seems. This for example https://www.bike24.com/p2642393.html?sku=2188362

 

[lemonadesoda]

Don't do it. I upgraded from Office 2003 to Office 2016. I saw not real benefit. Hate the click-to-install-everything and I hate the ribbon.

I decided to NOT upgrade any of the other machines. They say on 2003.

 

[zithe]

I liked 2013 better than 2010. Now my company uses 365 business premium. I have to say that the browser office is really good. Plus, the latest version of office has added Python.

If going with the subscription model, it's nice to pick one that has both web apps and desktop apps as an option, in case of issues with one or the other.

Was just helping someone the other day whose last 6 months of emails just disappeared from exchange, but they still had them locally.

Don't do it. I upgraded from Office 2003 to Office 2016. I saw not real benefit. Hate the click-to-install-everything and I hate the ribbon.

I decided to NOT upgrade any of the other machines. They say on 2003.

Microsoft Office version 2003 : Security vulnerabilities, CVEs

Security vulnerabilities of Microsoft Office version 2003

www.cvedetails.com

 

[Dr. Dro]

The latest versions of Office (full Professional suite, including Access) are included with the Microsoft 365 subscription. IMO it is worth subbing to Microsoft 365 simply because it also includes 1 TB of cloud storage, that has some pretty good integration with Windows. If you shop around, you can find yearly subscription keys for very cheap, and I don't mean from shady key sellers - Microsoft themselves actually has a "retail box" that comes with card that has a serial enclosed within that you can often find for much, much cheaper than just subscribing directly with them. If you use cloud storage in any way, Office is kind of included in the deal.

I think it's worth it. But feature wise? If you're in academia you don't need anything newer than Office 2003. You can probably get by even on Office XP, 2000 or 97 if you know how to format things correctly...

 

[Frick]

many of us including me beg to differ on that

I've used Libreoffice (though it was not an up to date version) on one of my other PCs and it works fine

It depends on the use case. I use Office 2021 at home, and Libreoffice at work (nothing serious in either case) and Libreoffice just feels ... wrong. But I've used MS Office a lot in the past, using Excel and Word at home feels like coming home when compared to Libreoffice, even if the latter does the things I need it to do. The big thing with Calc/Excel in my experience is that spreadsheets and tables created in Excel might not be quite 100% in Calc, which may or may not be a big deal.

I think it's worth it. But feature wise? If you're in academia you don't need anything newer than Office 2003. You can probably get by even on Office XP, 2000 or 97 if you know how to format things correctly...

I have a legitimate Office 2009 Ultimate key (got it from an job) and the main reason I upgraded was that Excel back than did not allow for mutliple instances. Which is huge. I did have some registry hacks that made it so I could run multiple instances, but they stopped working. I have Office 2000 somewhere too, but honestly after using a modern Excel I don't want to go back.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Microsoft Office version 2003 : Security vulnerabilities, CVEs

Security vulnerabilities of Microsoft Office version 2003

www.cvedetails.com

OK first off. Update your Office 2003 to SP3. I would not recommend anyone to run Office 2003 without at least applying ALL SP updates.

It seems that many/most of the vulnerabilities are related to the original gdiplus.dll file delivered with Office 2003 or Windows XP.

I searched by C: drive.

c:\Windows\system32\gdiplus.dll version 10.0.19041.1706

This is a Windows 10 file. Doesnt exist anywhere else on the C: drive. So the original published .dll is no longer in residence.

I think that if you install Office 2003 onto W10/W11 and have W10/W11 up to date, then many of the list of vulnerabilities are moot. The only ones of concern are "Public exploit exists" highlighted in red: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerab...&sha=3ffad9195a1da500492fa07a3a6ea252023b4925

Second, if Office 2003 is used for YOUR files, and not arbitrary files downloaded from the internet that have been specially crafted and malformed to hit specific buffer overflow and code execution, I think the attack window is small.

I would not recommend running Office 2003 on a machine running XP and using said machine to load internet files from unknown sources.

 

[mplayerMuPDF]

In the EU (and still UK apparently) it is legal to resell license keys that are no longer in use by the original buyer and that is a good way to get legit licenses for old MS software at a fraction of the (original) cost. I was recently made aware of this by this advertorial by a company involved in this business: Driving down the cost of Office applications

Personally, I used Libreoffice Calc (with formulas) last fall while collaborating with some people using MS Office and I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I did not face any incompatibility issues. The last MS Office version that I used at home was 2003, which my parents were running on XP many years ago. Even if you dislike LibreOffice very strongly, there are still alternatives to going with MS, such as Corel's WordPerfect and friends and SoftMaker Office, with a similar UI to MS' product.