Windows 7 End of Support

I am trying to get used to LibreOffice. So far it's been decent, not without it's learning curve. Base does not seem to play well with older mdb files.

Fantail said:

I am trying to get used to LibreOffice. So far it's been decent, not without it's learning curve. Base does not seem to play well with older mdb files.

Yeah, there definitely is a learning curve, especially if one has to relearn how to do things after being used to a different program. Also, LibreOffice depends far more heavily on Styles than MS Office ever did, especially in Writer, something I have yet to fully wrap my mind around. Still, I find Writer easier to use than Word most of the time once I got used to it. I don't miss MS Office one bit.

I've used Calc on occasion but I didn't have to do much relearning since I didn't use Excel much.

I haven't had any need to use Draw yet and I've never used Impress, Math Formula (me?, do math?) or Base programs I never needed.

I ran into the same learning curve when i ditched Adobe Acrobat Standard for Qoppa's PDF Studio Pro but, once I got used to it, I like it considerably better than Acrobat and can do everything I used to use Acrobat for only easier, especially when using multiple screens.

LevelBest said:

I've been watching a few Youtube videos about Linux Mint which seems an attractive way to go rather than move to W10.

The video I was watching said Linux does not need anti-virus. Is this true?

The one thing that concerns me is that I use MS Office 2007 and have many documents and spreadsheets. I have the original CD with the key number but I cannot use it again as I seem to recall it allows two installs only and I have an offline laptop with the second install.

If I upgraded my 'online' laptop to use Linux, would I be able to copy the programme files of MSOffice and install under the Linux OS?

You could make a Backup Image of your W7 install using Macrium Reflect, and then you could convert that to a VHD.
Once you have done that you could run W7 as a VM on Linux Mint using a VM Manager (like VMware Player).
I run W10 like this.

lehnerus2000 said:

There is something that people need to do when using an OS that is no longer supported.

They need to learn how to create regular Backup Images.

Tutorials
Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup
Imaging with free Macrium

...

Another option is to convert an existing W7 install to a VM.
Macrium Reflect Images can be converted to VMs.

VMs can be easily copied to external storage.
Obviously people should only run copies of their VM.

VMs can be easily isolated from networks, so they should be protected from malware and rogue updates.

I run various VMs in VMware Player on a Linux Mint 18 Host, including:

• W10 Pro (1703) VM
• XP VM with old Windows games
• W7 VM with software development tools (Visual Studio, Android Studio, Netbeans, etc.)

I can also run most of my VMs in VMware Workstation 9 on W7 (including a LM18 VM).
VMware Workstation 9 won't run W10 VMs though.

I've used LibreOffice and other office clones in business, most of the time they are fine for most documents. The issue is that everything is fine until you try to work with a group or individual that is using word, (or another Clone version).

The major issue concerns sharing documents where the output will have minor spacing and layout differences in the clone compared with Office - maybe this is acceptable for general internal documents but the same is not true with documents that are destined for customers, suppliers, government agencies, etc, a lot of which could need to be automatically "read" so the data boxes on a form for instance have to always be in an identical position from at least two edges.

It a system where the document could move from department to department, or company to company, there is no leeway for variation, the discrepancy is often magnified due to a document going through may hands

A lot of enterprise users are totally reliant on Exchange for internal and external company communication, groupshare for work tasks, and scheduling, as there are few if any alternatives for Outlook when dealing with exchange then for companies who use it it is an essential. Also of course The interaction potential between exchange and the office suite make Outlook an essential link to tie things together. Outlook has always been available separate from office in some markets where Open source Office suites are used in government and education in developing area for cost reasons, but the integration is nowhere as developed as can be seen with Office, Outlook, and exchange

Barman58 said:

I've used LibreOffice and other office clones in business, most of the time they are fine for most documents. The issue is that everything is fine until you try to work with a group or individual that is using word, (or another Clone version).

The major issue concerns sharing documents where the output will have minor spacing and layout differences in the clone compared with Office - maybe this is acceptable for general internal documents but the same is not true with documents that are destined for customers, suppliers, government agencies, etc, a lot of which could need to be automatically "read" so the data boxes on a form for instance have to always be in an identical position from at least two edges.

It a system where the document could move from department to department, or company to company, there is no leeway for variation, the discrepancy is often magnified due to a document going through may hands

One word: PDF.

Seriously, exporting ODT files to PDF makes them formatting stable and readable for everyone, no matter what platform they are using. I have my LibreOffice installations set to embeded the original document inside the PDF when I export it so, to simplify editing the PDF later, all I need to do is open the PDF in the appropriate LibreOffice app, usually (almost always, actually), for me, Writer. I almost ways export to PDF, then discard the original ODT file since I can always retrieve it from the PDF if ncessary. It's easier than keeping ODT and PDF versions of the same document.

Its the save / export differences, between office and the clones to the output format, that's the issue and this would still be present even if you use a PDF format for storage -

The embedded "original" ODF would be different from the ODF that has been edited in Word

The only way that may work is create a .PDF from the original document either from a DOCx or ODF with specific options such as to ensure that the PDF was identical wherever it was from, and then you from then on only directly edit the .PDF with PDF edit software.

The fact is that when dealing with a document containing positionally specific objects which may be edited by multiple users, you must choose either Word or one of the clones to exclusively work with the document, as they are not sufficiently compatible. also of course the divergence goes both ways so with a document that goes back and forth between multiple team members the minor changes would soon multiply to a level where it is very obvious.

In a company where there is no interaction with outside agencies where you have no control is involved you can switch all of your employees to any office system as long as this system is used exclusively.

A few of the issue may of course be intentional - Microsoft has already replaced it's proprietary .DOC format to DOCx due to the format being reverse engineered and used in early clones - it may be a useful test to dig out a 20 year .Doc and print it in a 20 year old word and then in Office 2019, (365) and see if they have visible differences.

These minor changes are important to companies who want an specific company image...

Many years ago I developed a system for constructing quotations from set phases and boilerplate text - the engineer would tick boxes on a screen or paper sheet and the WP operator would duplicate these selections in the Word Processor, because all the WP operators had their own idea of the company standard for presentation all the auto text, and images was inserted into pre formatted blank documents, so that they all gave an acceptable output style - this was built on WordPerfect and then needed completely updating as time past and versions changed, I did actually update it to Word when windows and Office took off