To think that £60 a year for MS Office is crazy? What do people have instead?

[midnightlurker]

Clicked on the link to renew and couldn't believe the price! Only want it on one computer, for Word and Excel!!!

Your employer might have signed up to the home use programme, in which case it costs peanuts.

Try here:

www.microsofthup.com/hupuk/home.aspx?culture=en-GB

You can also use it for free via the web email.

Don't forget the £60 a year is also for 5 users. Each user can use it on multiple devices. And it comes with 1tb of storage per user.

We've started using Google docs as my two eldest use it for school now at primary and at seniors.

Thanks for all the ideas! Have managed to sort it through DH's work for this year .

I just bought it for a one off cost (£90? ish) and I don't have to pay yearly.

Am I missing something??

I'm guessing Well that you're tied to the version of Office that you bought, which is fine. If you pay £x a year on subscription or are part of a home use programme through work, it's Evergreen (I think!) which means you're entitled to use the latest version available.

I think being on subscription also means you can update your OS as that too is evergreen. Again I could be mistaken - software licensing is fiendishly complicated.

Sign up for an outlook account and you can use the Web versions free

Get a Mac
But seriously, all the software that comes with a Mac can be converted to a Word Based Format, they computer itself lasts so much longer than a Windows one (had mine 7 years now!) No anti-virus needed, and it's generally much quicker!

All down to personal preference though, which I totally understand. But I saw my Mac as an investment, and in all honesty, it's paid off! Only thing I've had to buy for it in 7 years is a new charger!

Google office suite here too. In fact, the organisation I work for actively encourages us to use it over MS Office. We have both, but Google is by far the most powerful for collaborative working. The only thing I've found that Google docs (=ms word) can't do easily is format in columns. Putting text into a table is a good workaround. I prefer Google Sheets to Ms Excel - the conditional formatting and fliters are really good.

We have an employee purchase programme and it's only £9.95 whenever a new version comes out.

I use Libre Office as well as MS Office, there can be formatting issues when sharing stuff saved as .doc, I just save documents as a pdf before sending, job done. It opens all Office files too.

It is a little like going back in time to before Office got The Ribbon but frankly most of the Office updates haven't actually done anything majorly useful. Except cropping pictures, can't work out how to do that...