
"While Office LTSC 2024 can run completely disconnected – a requirement for many commercial users – Office 2024 requires both a Microsoft account and an internet connection."
I wonder what they think that Microsoft will gain from this requirement?
The Long Term Service Channel (LTSC) version of Microsoft Office 2024 is being joined by a version aimed at consumers and small businesses that want to avoid paying subscription fees. Microsoft strongly prefers that users opt for Microsoft 365, yet it is also aware that a sizeable proportion would rather choose what is …
Sometimes converts .CSV silently to "tab delimited" on save.
If you have, on a German Windows, IP numbers in the format of *.[0-9][0-9][0-9].[0-9][0-9][0-9].[0-9][0-9][0-9], i.e. three triple digits after the first number, it STILL silently converts it to a number. Even if you disable autocorrect.
So 10.200.20.200 is let alone, cell content is "10.200.20.200". But 10.200.200.200 is silently converted to 10200200200 - to add to the confusion it DISPLAYS it as 10.200.200.200, but the cell content isn't...
Among many other over-eagernes-we-at-Microsoft-know-better problems.
Libreoffice does it right, and if not select "Text" when opening the .CSV to avoid too much intelligence. Libreoffice, for example, converts a cell with "FALSE" to the number "0", and "TRUE" to 1 if you let it be at "Standard"...
Or "any field with a slash in it is a date"
Or "lt looks like you're tring to input a long/lat, let me mash it with a float for you"
Or Copy paste adding arbitary CR/LF to the copied cell contents depending on if MOD(RND)=7
$org is trying to save £24M, yet wont consider LibreOffice, I suspect mainly because of M$ marketing warfare...it certainly can't be because O365 is actually good.
> Or "any field with a slash in it is a date"
Yeah, exactly the same for the German notation 22.8 or 22.8.94, which is the 22nd September (1994)...
> Or "lt looks like you're tring to input a long/lat, let me mash it with a float for you"
Don't you E-9 me!
> Or Copy paste adding arbitary CR/LF to the copied cell contents depending on if MOD(RND)=7
I did not have that yet... I always hit F2 before pasting INTO a cell. But now that you mentioned, it will happen next time I use it.
> $org is trying to save £24M, yet wont consider LibreOffice
The problem is that excel is insanely versatile. Starmaker Office comes quite close, but Libre is faaar away. See my pet bug for xyz chart which Excel can since 1992. Couldn't get that chart type with earlier versions of Excel, of I simply failed to make it work with earlier versions. Other thing I miss in Libre and Starmaker / Excel have: An actually versatile "cell format depending on X" method.
The reality is: They all give up and use alternatives. Not necessarily Excel or SOFTMAKER office (not Starmaker, my bad), there is enough out there to create such graphics. It would be nice to have a direct gnuplot connection though, that would work well.
Not for want of trying to stop users shoehorning Excel to be a database, we've got edicts from on high not to use it in such a way, legal regulations regarding such behaviour, and a development department ready to satisfy evey data and application need.
I think introducing miscreant's fingers to 'the bench vice of enlightnment' is may be the only option.
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stop supplying the products customers knew they wanted?
Now it's pretty much the Python Cheese Shop sketch [video] except lacking the satisfactory conclusion.
I would have thought if a customer were prepared to pay you $100-$200 for your tat but without any further connection with your business you would take their money and speed them on their way.
Fortunately home users that don't need the full brain damage of Office have a few alternatives to choose from - both paid and libre.
If MS manage to BSOD users' PCs with an unsolicited Office2024 update even the most loyal MS disciple might turn apostate.
When laws and regulations made it easy to not do so and keep earning money.
Microsoft has ALWAYS done this. Step one kill the competition by any means needed. Step two, now that there is no competition waste as less time and effott into our products as possible because we are the only option. Step 3 Profit!
It's more, I think, than just profit.It's an almost psychopathic determination to control how people do stuff, to make us do stuff their way, not just with their tools.
So much of the last couple of decade's changes seem to be about controlling what we do.
The Start menu becoming successively less easy to modify and organise. The loss of the control over Office menus with the introduction of the Ribbon. Even demanding a Microsoft account to use their software has elements of this ( they probably don't need it just to snoop on our data).
I'm guessing there's envy of Apple's control and consequent ability to make money from a walled garden that might be part of this (So still about profit). And some of that may be the flop that was Windows phone (which was a damned good phone too) and Windows 8. Their attempt to replicate Apple's success.
And of course there's still the echoes of the shock they got when they failed to foresee the rise of the internet.
> I would have thought if a customer were prepared to pay you $100-$200 for your tat but without any further connection with your business you would take their money and speed them on their way.
And many businesses operate that way. However, there is also an absolutely huge market in trying to retain custom at your business by maintaining ongoing relationships with clients, hence the proliferation of rented things (from software to streaming services to even car heated seats). This proves to the banks and credit houses supporting the business in question that they have an ongoing profit stream which can be credited against, making the financial institutions money because they have lent money to a business which has a business case and other proofs to show they can be reasonably expected to return said monies.
This ongoing revenue stream for a business also looks good for shareholders and other interested parties, as well as making business planning easier as you can see your expected revenue stream month on month. And, if you get your pricing right, you can also make a profit from people paying for things they don't actually use, effectively giving you "money for old rope". This can also give you a competitive advantage against your business rivals as you can use this predicted income to slash your costs compared to theirs, offer products at below market value and/or at a loss for a period of time, and once the competition is eliminated you have created your own ecosystem of customers to exploit.
And once you have people locked into your ecosystem you can start forcing changes on them, knowing they can't/won't go elsewhere as there either aren't any (reasonable) alternatives, or the competition is doing the same as you anyway.
Once upon a time MS included 10 years of support in the price with no extension, now it’s only five (if you are lucky), however, you do have the now well established practise of up to 3 years of paid support beyond this point, if you desire.
I suspect “retirement” is the new MS word for this situation.
Try installing old Word or Excel from ancient Office CDs on modern hardware. It is funny how fast they operate without all the modern bloat.
I will still put these onto modern hardware for the oldies who just want to write the odd letter to the council. They can't get their heads around something new like Libre Office so classic Word is still perfect.
And it is so refreshing seeing it start almost instantly instead of taking a minute to connect to all the clouds and AI's of the current mess from Microsoft.
Why is it the faster computers have got, the slower applications start?
> Writing letters has not evolved so much
Either has writing books. People even managed to do it before MS Office!
There isn't really a reason to use MS Office, except maybe for opening MS Office documents you get sent (and LibreOffice usually manages quite well)..
The "killer app" for the home user and small business user so MS have been gunning for it for years- It's not been in the Home versions, where it's most useful, for years. Now it's gone completely.
Of little use to IT or publishing pros, it was perfect for the home and small office.
It's what we use to create a little price list for a small shop, a menu, a newssheet or an A4 poster for the school/church/synagogue/mosque/temple etc fete.
Or to make a little, fun, greetings card for some family occasion. And so on.
i.e. it's just useful for the SOHO user. Whereas Powerpoint.........
So of course they dump Publisher and boost PowerPoint.
Fuckwits.
Office 97 still works on windows 11, (you may require a USB cd drive lol) and the .docx incompatibility isn't really a problem. All modern versions of turd..sorry word, can read .doc, and if someone sends me a .docx, not hard to read it with freeware.
Edit... it would become a chore if i used and edited dozens of .docx files a day, but that is not my use case, YMMV
I can confirm that. Got my c:\Office97 (installed in Win10 x64 in 2018) on my Win11. Still works. Though not everything works, Outlook and Access for example.
To install I installed in a Server 2000 VM, and then transported it over since the installer from MY CD is 16 bit.
So does that mean it now has improved support for AI/ML matrix maths and thus make it easier to create DIY AI/ML; taking the ‘abuse’ of Excel to another level…
[Aside: Did a quick Google and it seems using Ecxel for AI/ML is quite a thing. For example: ” Machine Learning with Microsoft Excel? Yes, PLEASE!” ]
This is BAD, really BAD. There are some places where an internet connection is NOT possible (or allowed) (don't ask). You need a true stand alone version of the software. Thankfully there are alternatives, but some people are too stuck on software from Redmond, that they don't know better. Hopefully they will learn, and more hopefully not the hard way.
Sorry, no internet connection here. Leave smart watches and cell phones at the door!
They do, for one reason and one reason alone that winds me up every time I hear it.
"I want to make sure I can open all the files people send me".
In the decades I've been using LibreOffice (and ancestors), I've never had a problem opening up any document...ever...so I don't know where this line of thinking comes from...other than on Linux, you get weird formatting problems...but they are easily resolved by installing the Microsoft font suite.
The only time I have problems with documents and formatting is when they were created and formatted by a numpty that doesn't understand how to properly format a document and does whatever it takes to get it "looking" right.
LibreOffice has no compatibility issues, but it does expose your fraudulent claims when it comes to "office skills".
AKA "just about everyone except professional secretaries". Word is an absolute pig to "properly" format a document with.
Voice of experience - I put together some 300+ pages of a group project report in Wordperfect in less than two hours, one of the other members struggled to pull together ~75 pages of an earlier report for the same project in Word in less than a whole day in class. Both were from source pages split fairly evenly across the group.
When I presented WordPerfect training courses it was a joy to teach people how to do tabs properly. With a lot of classroom tuition there is the notion that students are afraid to touch the keyboard in case they screw up something that is on a knife-edge of stability. The visual cues, even with WordPerfect for DOS were second to none. So any woopsies are a doddle to correct.
Hmm. Yes.
Documents that my missus gets from Girl Guiding are always horribly cobbled together* and opening them in LO makes stuff misbehave badly- even worse than in Office, though even that often isn't great.
*Whoever creates this stuff-** mostly forms for Guide leaders and parents to fill out- thinks they're going to be printed out and completed by hand. So they don't know or care that the formatting falls apart when the recipients try to fill them out on the screen.
**Still living in the 20thC
I agree with everything you've said.
The only time I've had push-back about LibreOffice compatibility, is people freaking out that other people (that use MS Office apps) won't be able to open the files they've created in LibreOffice.
That is, until I show them that you can set the default save options in LibreOffice, to save docs, spreadsheets and presentations, automatically in the MS equivalent formats without having to manually do it when you save the files.
Viola.
Oh, and eM Client is an excellent (Windows or Mac) alternative to Outlook (free for personal use with less than 2 email accounts) but worth the money to buy a license if you need it for business (you can buy a lifetime license or subscription).
I run my IT Support business on both.
I've been aware of lots of alternatives to Outlook for a long time, but the problem is Microsoft constantly has to fuck around with it's authentication / session management. Quite a few mail clients that support Office365 integration will randomly stop receiving email without producing any errors...and you have to go through the soft shoe shuffle of re-authenticating to get it working again.
At the moment, I use the latest version of Thunderbird (I'm on Linux, so I can't really use many of the fancier clients out there) and the new UI is actually quite nice. I used to use Evolution, but my god is that a heavy application to run...it absolutely chews through CPU cycles in the background...I really don't care about my email being indexed for faster search...we've reached a point now where SSDs are quick enough that you don't need an index for searching to be fast...we need to drop this bullshit ASAP...the difference between searching a none indexed inbox vs an indexed one is barely noticeable on an SSD, if you didn't compare them, you wouldn't notice at all.
I noticed the phrase locked-in-time
You pay now $ 149 / € 149 / £ 149/ .... for a product famous for not wearing out or losing its existing functionality. Until you hit some arbitrary date in the future and pooofff! It's gone.
It all feels not logical to me.
To this day I operate software bought decades ago on an old W98 laptop and it still works fine to this day. It will die the day when the laptop decides to cut out.
I try not to use modern software not because I'm set in my ways but rather I just don't trust software vendors any more. Most, if not all, of the features we use everyday were fixed 25 years ago or so so everything since then seems to be an exercise in meaningless tail-chasing combined with a concerted effort to actually stop things from working.
So, for example, my venerable copy of Office 2000 and something still works because it was sold back when you owned what you purchased. It doesn't need ongoing subscriptions to keep it running and there's no danger of it being obsoleted by some maintenance update. (Usually these just rendered the package unusable but in recent years its switched to (just straight stop it working).
Microsoft isn't the only, or even the worst, offender.
Incidentally, I don't use the old Office any more because Libre does the same job and understands various file formats. Microsft's always changing the file formats as one of its tools to enforce planned obsolescence -- its irritating because we all know its unnecessary.