I would have suspected earlier versions of Office were still in fairly wide use. This was 10 years ago, but some kid who just got a job as some sort ofntech said the company was still using NT/2000.

And then someone brought up security patches in this thread. I guess now it makes sense.

Office 365 has really killed of the traditional office installs.

I would say the most important app in deciding Office upgrades is Outlook and with the majority of companies now using 365 as the mail server are forced to use whatever is supported (with Microsoft dropping support for 2019 and earlier)

Not many companies I support buy/upgrade Office licences anymore. If you already have a 365 subscription for mailbox's its just easier to pay a little bit more to include the full 365 licence with the software included.

The only exception to this is Access. 2 companies I support are "stuck on" either Access 2003 or 2007 as use a few databases that aren't compatible with newer versions but not worth the time/money to update. Even then it's only installed for the few people that need it and just Access, the rest of the office suite is still 365.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-03-03, 23:43:

and does anyone really use Powerpoint anymore?

Oh yes, they definitely do. And they're still really bad at it (if my work is anything to go by).

PowerPoint is probably one of the best examples of how learning to a piece of software doesn't make one an expert at the thing the software is used for. The skillset to make a good slide deck or deliver a good presentation is independent of the software itself.

This is largely true of most applications in my experience.

PowerPoint is ubiquitous in universities. Most instructors use it for lectures now and the old chalkboard style is a lost art. It's also used extensively during meetings.

Previously small going on midsize companies that have all functions at one location typically, you can tell the department by which part of office they use... exclusively...
accounting requests expense reports and gets it in .ppt from marketing, .doc from admin. Sheila is organising the potluck and she's in accounting so the flyer is in .xls 🤣

The hospital that I work at puts out health and safety stuff that looks like it came from a 90s clipart CD. It's stuff like "butt out smoking" with ashtray clipart. I like to imagine that there's some person in her 50s or 60s who has been doing those on a Windows 95 machine for over 30 years now.

Office 365 basic I think is $3 a month.

I think I'll learn open office for now 😀. IOW, never mind LOLOLOL

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-03-03, 16:26:

Honestly, if you don't have a legit license for the most recent version of office, then just use LibreOffice instead. These days the general functionality and interface is pretty close between them both. It's 'good enough' for most things.

No, it doesn't have a direcr Access equivalent, but Access needs to die anyway.

It's true that you can really do everything with it, one might argue that with MS pushing the "cloud" aggressively in all possible places it's even better for a certain category of simple users. The problems start when you want to exchange files.

You send your CV, the recipient opens it with MS office and your table is mangled, you send your offer and alignment is off appearing unprofessional... you get the point.

If you really want to be the “Star” of the company Master using MS Office.
I remember when I was in a computer technical school back in 1995 that taught all the Microsoft certification classes
The Students Mastered MS Windows, Office and Access. They Helped set up the School with a really cool MS Office environment with Access database, MS Mail, Novell Group wise, Adobe suit, Unix and Apple integration, and all kinds of Multimedia software. Windows servers, Novell servers, Apple computers, and Unix servers and workstations.

Our school was well known in Silicon Valley and the Students were highly sought after by Big tech companies.

At every tech company I worked at the Stars of the Building were MS Office Wizards

Today It’s inexpensive and Easy to learn. Lots of video instruction courses available today.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-03-04, 04:26:

The hospital that I work at puts out health and safety stuff that looks like it came from a 90s clipart CD. It's stuff like "butt out smoking" with ashtray clipart. I like to imagine that there's some person in her 50s or 60s who has been doing those on a Windows 95 machine for over 30 years now.

that's nostalgic! great if it as from a color dot matrix printer 😀

konc wrote on 2024-03-04, 07:24:

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-03-03, 16:26:

Honestly, if you don't have a legit license for the most recent version of office, then just use LibreOffice instead. These days the general functionality and interface is pretty close between them both. It's 'good enough' for most things.

No, it doesn't have a direcr Access equivalent, but Access needs to die anyway.

It's true that you can really do everything with it, one might argue that with MS pushing the "cloud" aggressively in all possible places it's even better for a certain category of simple users. The problems start when you want to exchange files.

You send your CV, the recipient opens it with MS office and your table is mangled, you send your offer and alignment is off appearing unprofessional... you get the point.

I do most of my work in Linux and have stopped using LibreOffice for exactly this reason. When going between it and MS Office, the formatting often gets messed up and it ends up creating additional work. It also has a worse spell checker and will often miss stuff like extra spaces. I can do 95% of my work in Linux, but Office is the main reason why I can't use it alone.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-03-04, 11:29:

If you really want to be the “Star” of the company Master using MS Office.
I remember when I was in a computer technical school back in 1995 that taught all the Microsoft certification classes
The Students Mastered MS Windows, Office and Access. They Helped set up the School with a really cool MS Office environment with Access database, MS Mail, Novell Group wise, Adobe suit, Unix and Apple integration, and all kinds of Multimedia software. Windows servers, Novell servers, Apple computers, and Unix servers and workstations.

What constitutes "MS Office" has changed considerably in recent times. Back then there were a handful of applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint that people mainly learned. Maybe Outlook and Access for good measure. If a person knew those, there were solid.

Today in my list of Office 365 apps are twenty-six different applications. A number of applications (e.g. Power BI, Power Apps, etc.) are specialties in their own right that require additional skills.

This also isn't counting the hundreds of additional cloud-based applications that can be added to the mix. Nor is this counting all the back end (Azure, SQL, etc.) that can be learned from an administrative perspective.

This is why I suggested earlier the real skill to learn is how to apply different solutions in business environments. It's not enough to just learn the functionality of a particular piece of software. You need to know how to use it to do useful things.

It is particularly impotent to have a grandma chequer to be shore that you are using the correctly word rather than having the spill checker just assume what worm you meant to typo.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-04, 18:52:

It is particularly impotent to have a grandma chequer to be shore that you are using the correctly word rather than having the spill checker just assume what worm you meant to typo.

my smellchecker pikes this lessage!