No problem Stephen. This problem for me was triggered by my wife's need for Excel and her MBP failing and in upgrading from that phase I went to a barely used 2016 MBP - which I knew would necessitate some sort of MS Office solution for her (as Big Sur is incompatible with the MS Office 2008 (!!!) version that had been functioning on her now failed MBP). So it was either $199 for a single licence or ~$55/year (after employee discount and tax refund component) for 6 licences (for the whole family), version updating provided automatically, 1TB per user cloud storage. It seemed a no brainer for me. To be honest I have never used Pages or Numbers - but undoubtedly they can deliver. All my colleagues use the MS Office format so it seems no point using the Apple formats just for my own principles.
Kind Regards Peter Crisp ----- Original Message ----- From: wamug@wamug.org.au To:"WAMUG Mailing List" Cc: Sent:Tue, 30 Mar 2021 10:23:42 +0800 Subject:Re: [WAMUG} MS Office for Mac Gosh Peter !You make me wonder about upgrading my MS Office in the future. I used to use Pages and Numbers years ago, but moved to Office because of the incompatibilities.But from what you say it sounds like things have changed from that point of view. Thank you for your input. On 30 Mar 2021, at 8:40 am, Peter Hinchliffe wrote: On 29 Mar 2021, at 5:00 pm, Pete wrote: Hi Neil, yes I agree with your comments below. My deal was 30% off the regular Microsoft price of $129 I think brought it down to $90 odd. Then with tax deductibility down to $55 there abouts. Happy with that. The discount continues as well for all years I remain subscribed. Regards Pete As much as I hate both subscription-based software, and have an aversion to Microsoft Office software, I decided several years ago to take out an Office 365 subscription. It is extremely difficult to work in a professional environment with Microsoft Office. It is simply a necessary evil. Despite my misgivings, I do recognise that Office 365 actually represents extremely good value. At $99 p.a., and a with a renewl coming up in April, I will be happy to pay it. I givers me the ability to instal it on every device I own, and to able to operate trouble-free with all Office documents people send me. Having said all that, I rarely use any of the Office products for document creation. I find them overblown, confusing, and laden with features that often don’t work very well. I’m much happier working with Pages for most document creation, and I’ll always use Numbers in preference to Excel if I need a spreadsheet. It’s simply a more elegant product, and more than meets my needs. If I need to collaborate with an Office user, Isimply export as Word or Excel. The compatibility with modern versions of both platform is very good. The truly frustrating thing about it is, even more than the terrible software that it is, is the many things that I see people try to do with it when there are much more appropriate, simple and cheap ways to achieve the same ends. For example, so many people seem to like to use Excel as a database solution. It’s a terrible idea, for so many reasons I haven’t got time to go into here. Being a filemaker Developer I naturally go t Filemaker for a database solution, but there are many easy, inexepensive solutions, all of which are better than Excel. That's just one example. I could go on, but I won’t. Suffice to say I have never regretted my decision to take an Office 365 subscription. Kind regards, Peter Hinchliffe Apwin Computer ServicesFileMaker Pro Solutions Developer Perth, Western Australia Phone (618) 9332 6482 Mob 0403 046 948 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Mac because I prefer it -- Windows because I have to. -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - Guidelines - Settings & Unsubscribe - Regards Stephen Chape Mac by choice Windows because my employer knew no better Links: ------ [1] mailto:hinch...@multiline.com.au [2] mailto:petercr...@westnet.com.au [3] http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml [4] http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml [5] http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug
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