Free microsoft office for NUIG students

yer man!

Is there free Microsoft office software for NUI Galway students or is it only the online based one which is in the NUI outlook email thing which allows you create documents online. Also if there is free software, is it compatible with a Mac?

Marto10

Have u heard of open office? it does the exact same stuff that Microsoft office does (word, excel, powerpoint) and its free and compatible with a mac.

Here is the link to where you can download it/ it is the first 1.

http://download.openoffice.org/

Dan_Solo

Marto10 wrote: »

Have u heard of open office? it does the exact same stuff that Microsoft office does

While it nearly does, this isn't quite true. Ever tried to do a polynomial fit curve in the OpenOffice Excel?:(

Marto10

To be fair It doesn't have everything that Microsoft office has but has a word document tool which most students will use for assignments.

Im afraid I haven't tried that yet, give me time

Fisher Calhoun

I would normally recommend people to try OpenOffice, but I have heard reports of people having formatting problems when it comes to submitting assignments/essays as a Word format (.doc). While the university's site license doesn't cover use of office on personal machines, you can purchase a student copy (at a reasonable rate) via links like http://www.software4students.ie . I just checked that one now and Office 2010 Pro Plus is available for €65.

If you're doing a module with the IT Department you should have received an email about the MSDNAA which allows you to get MS software for free.

aperture_nuig

Fisher Calhoun wrote: »

I would normally recommend people to try OpenOffice, but I have heard reports of people having formatting problems when it comes to submitting assignments/essays as a Word format (.doc).

open office normally defaults to .odt file format, so if this was the file type of the submitted document then the college may reject it

ps open office will just about do if you cant afford ms office, but if you use open office a lot for reports and general word processing, you should look hard at investing in ms office.

Fionn MacCool

Do people still have morale obligations to a student 'acquiring' stuff like Word for free?

Dan_Solo

Fionn MacCool wrote: »

Do people still have morale obligations to a student 'acquiring' stuff like Word for free?

Last time I checked students were not exempt from the criminal justice system.:D

brianthebard

aperture_nuig wrote: »

ps open office will just about do if you cant afford ms office, but if you use open office a lot for reports and general word processing, you should look hard at investing in ms office.

I don't understand this position, I've written a MA dissertation with OO and I'm working on my phd with it now. I have heard it more than once though - what's the reasoning behind this?

Fionn MacCool wrote: »

Do people still have morale obligations to a student 'acquiring' stuff like Word for free?

Illegal file sharing can not be discussed on boards. Mod.

Fionn MacCool

brianthebard wrote: »

Illegal file sharing can not be discussed on boards. Mod.

Well I knew you would, that's why I said people and not mods. And you don't have to keep ending your posts with "Mod", I know you're a mod, you remind everyone at every possible occasion.

RolandIRL

Fionn MacCool wrote: »

And you don't have to keep ending your posts with "Mod", I know you're a mod, you remind everyone at every possible occasion.

i think he adds Mod when his mod hat is on. the rest of the time, he's just a regular user giving an opinion.

brianthebard

whiteman gets a cookie, fionn gets a verbal (well written) warning to not question mod actions in thread again, as it against the rules. mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod.

TheCosmicFrog

Unfortunately not even the IT students get Microsoft Office for the economical freeness that is beer. I'd recommend OpenOffice.org or IBM Lotus Symphony instead. Or Google Docs? I use it for everything. /simple user

rivalius13

Openoffice until LibreOffice gets out of Beta if you don't want to spend money and don't plan on doing much other than basic stuff, but if you want to do much hardcore **** you really can't compare with Office. Student rate is €69, can't go wrong. http://www.microsoft.com/student/office/en-ie/default.aspx

RolandIRL

brianthebard wrote: »

whiteman gets a cookie, fionn gets a verbal (well written) warning to not question mod actions in thread again, as it against the rules. mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod mod.

mmm...NOM NOM NOM any chance of a cup of tea with that? :P

thing about the Google Docs CosmicFrog, though is if you don't have an internet connection at home, it's not as handy but i've OpenOffice and MS Office installed on my laptop, and i switch between the two regularly...i use Excel mostly cos that's what's used in Physics Labs for graphing results, and i'm not really sure how to use it in OO. i use OO for writing stuff up, but it's mostly a copy & paste job, to read wiki articles offline.

as said before, always save (with whatever software) in .doc format as it's the most widely used, and can be used with most, if not all, word processors.
if you want something not as bulky as OO (it does take up a good bit of space on the hard drive), and only really type up documents, i'd go with AbiWord. small download and found it similar to MS Word

HotDogger

I tried using openoffice but I found that it was useless for reading ppt slides (messed up the graphs) and was always screwing up files when converting them to microsoft.

Dan_Solo

whiteman19 wrote: »

as said before, always save (with whatever software) in .doc format as it's the most widely used, and can be used with most, if not all, word processors.

Word 2007 defaults to .docx, not .doc, which is annoying as most people just start saving files as .docx and then everyone has to upgrade their Word.
OpenOffice won't open .docx (well last time I looked), and as soon as it does MS will invent a new file format anyway.

aperture_nuig

TheCosmicFrog wrote: »

Or Google Docs? I use it for everything. /simple user

you could also use the ms live office suite if you're talking about online solutions. just login to your nuig email account (outlook.com etc.), click on the office button at the top and away you go. you can also store/ share these files on your skydrive.

TheCosmicFrog

Dan_Solo wrote: »

OpenOffice won't open .docx (well last time I looked), and as soon as it does MS will invent a new file format anyway.

OpenOffice will open docx perfectly

aperture_nuig wrote: »

you could also use the ms live office suite if you're talking about online solutions. just login to your nuig email account (outlook.com etc.), click on the office button at the top and away you go. you can also store/ share these files on your skydrive.

Meh. Have looked at it. Don't like the interface compared to Google Docs.

RDM_83 again

Will second the recommendation for Abiword, been using it for the last while for essay writing and actually starting to really like it (have office 2003 as well though so always run it through it first to check formatting etc though).
Think Powerpoint is the real killer though, haven't found a program for linux (in my limited experience) that does them perfect.
Ps if anybody has found a good program in the style of Endnote I'd love a link

TheCosmicFrog

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Will second the recommendation for Abiword, been using it for the last while for essay writing and actually starting to really like it (have office 2003 as well though so always run it through it first to check formatting etc though).
Think Powerpoint is the real killer though, haven't found a program for linux (in my limited experience) that does them perfect.
Ps if anybody has found a good program in the style of Endnote I'd love a link

Google Docs Presentation? Or Prezi.com if you really want to impress

RDM_83 again

As long as I keep my flying star transitions its all good

Not too worried can't see any presentations for a while yet in course, though will check them in powerpoint what ever I use as I've been thrown off stride before by all the text appearing at once or off centre etc

po0k

Just for fun / theses http://www.latex-project.org/

theintern

TheCosmicFrog wrote: »

OpenOffice will open docx perfectly

It does open docx basically perfectly, and will save it too, but be wary of the font you use, if it's something that's not on the recipients PC it can come out looking pretty nasty.

They still have problems with pptx though, it never seems to come out right, which is frustrating as many people are now using pptx instead of ppt.

Hopefully LibreOffice will help with this.

TheCosmicFrog

One annoying thing is that OpenOffice.org Database won't open .accdb files made in Microsoft Office Access.