Word look alike?

"Carlos E.R." wrote:

On 16/09/2020 14.28, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Hi,

I'm looking for a simple free (or gratis) program to replace Word. Me, I
use LibreOffice without a doubt, but it is not for me. I need something
simple, that ideally saves in word 97-2003 format by default, so that
the user doesn't have to think.

They have just learnt that the employer has now an option to provide
Office. Nobody knew.

Ufff! Good news for once. :-D

(I did tell: you must ask your employer...)

Likely it is a volume license (a maximum number of seats) rather than a
single license. If she leaves that employer, she loses the license to
Office. She might to use something she gets to keep for her own use and
even with her next employer having her work from home.

On 18/09/2020 05.54, VanguardLH wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote:

On 16/09/2020 14.28, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Hi,

I'm looking for a simple free (or gratis) program to replace Word. Me, I
use LibreOffice without a doubt, but it is not for me. I need something
simple, that ideally saves in word 97-2003 format by default, so that
the user doesn't have to think.

They have just learnt that the employer has now an option to provide
Office. Nobody knew.

Ufff! Good news for once. :-D

(I did tell: you must ask your employer...)

Likely it is a volume license (a maximum number of seats) rather than a
single license.

Yes, very likely.

If she leaves that employer, she loses the license to
Office. She might to use something she gets to keep for her own use and
even with her next employer having her work from home.

No risk of that - these are permanent jobs :-)

--
Cheers, Carlos.

Ken Blake wrote:
On 9/17/2020 12:10 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote:

The worst of this is that my friend "needs Word" for working at home
because of the pandemic, thus her employer should be providing any
software needed at their expense, but apparently they will not :-/

You sure MS Word is a mandate dictated by her employer? Maybe she just
thinks it is a mandate from her employer? More likely they just want
her to work on Word documents.


Or create documents in .doc or .docx format. As long as she did, her
employer would be highly unlikely to know what program she was using.

Round tripping .doc(x) files through LO invariably changes the formatting
and if you've got anything complex then chances are that it gets screwed
up. At one time I tried to use LO/OO for a couple of years with colleagues
who used Word and in the end it just wasn't worth the effort.

For home where you're the only person working on the documents then LO is
perfect.

Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 17/09/2020 23.11, nospam wrote:
In article , Carlos E.R.
wrote:

Not sure how her employer would know she was not using MS Word at home
if the alternative word processors could read and save in .doc[x]
format. Her employer would just be getting a file as the result of her
home-based work.

the alternatives are not 100% compatible.

the moment she sends a file that doesn't render properly for her
employer or that she has problems reading a file sent to her, it will
become quite obvious she's not using the real thing. this is most
commonly seen with tables.

Yes, but in that case the employer should be supplying the computer, the
software, and the training. They don't do any of that, so they can not
demand anything in that respect.

they can demand using software that is fully compatible with the rest
of the company, which is almost always going to be the same software
the rest of the company is using.

Only if they supply it. Law here.
If they are not paying the software, I decide.

Yep. That's the difference on the two sides of the pond. In the US
employees should be grateful to have a job and are treated like ****,
whereas on this side employees are treated like an asset and are valued. It
is the employer's responsibility to provide employees with the tools they
need to be able to work.

VanguardLH wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:

Carlos E.R. wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, Word comes with the full Office suite;

Assuming that you are talking about the Microsoft Office suite (there
are other Office suites), yes it does. But it not only come with the
full suite, it comes with all the smaller editions too.

Is it possible to get Word alone?

Yep, but that will be more expensive than the payware alternatives
already suggested, and infinitely more expensive than the free
alternatives. She can afford $100 to get the standalone edition of Word
2019?

Remember that working from home was the big change because of Covid-19
(aka SARS 2). We all geared up for the changes to distance ourselves.
When there's an effective vaccine, and especially when the death rate
from Covid drops below that for the common flu, we'll be gearing back to
working at work. She could pay $70 for a 1-year subscription to
Microsoft 365 Personal. Then she'll have MS Word without any worries
about document or feature compatility with the alternatives. In less
than a year from now, she might be back at her workplace using whatever
software they choose.

The only reason to look at offline alternatives is she doesn't have a
decent Internet connection, or security mandates from her employer
require no documents be stored online

That'd be an extremely paranoid/high level security requirement. Online
services are very secure these days meaning most governments use them as do
other organisations with sensitive data.

(but then just how is she going to
get these documents in the first place if not transmitted over the
Internet)? With a decent Internet connection, have her try the free
Microsoft web apps for Office. In OneDrive (assuming the aggregate size
of her documents don't exceed the 5 GB default quota), she gets to
decide with whom she shares the documents.

Many employers don't allow employees to choose where to store files.

"Carlos E.R." wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

If she leaves that employer, she loses the license to Office. She
might to use something she gets to keep for her own use and even
with her next employer having her work from home.

No risk of that - these are permanent jobs :-)

*She* could decide to change to a different employer or profession.
Yeah, I know, once a gov't worker then always a gov't worker.

When Covid becomes history and she is back in the workplace, she might
want to have something to use for her own personal documents. Which
prompts me to ask: What was she using for her personal documentation
needs before Covid pushed her to working at home?

Chris wrote:

Many employers don't allow employees to choose where to store files.

Did her school provide her with VPN access to their network? Otherwise,
they don't get to choose where are her files that she sends them (from
her offline or online storage across the Internet to their "safe"
storage service). Unless they setup a VPN for her where tokens are used
to validate her endpoint as authorized to connect to their endpoint and
what privileges her connection gets, and where she could then open and
edit files that remain in-place on their intranet hosts (except for the
local buffering in the word processor to allow it to work on the opened
file), they have no control over where are copies of those files on her
end (offline on her computer, online in a OneDrive, Google Drive, or
Dropbox account, and will get transmitted via Internet back to wherever
is their "safe" storage). If not using a corporate-grade VPN to let her
connect to their intranet hosts, the files will be wherever she wants.
Relying on HTTPS to encrypt the transmission still does not control
where *she* decides to store the files.

VanguardLH wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

If she leaves that employer, she loses the license to Office. She
might to use something she gets to keep for her own use and even
with her next employer having her work from home.

No risk of that - these are permanent jobs :-)

*She* could decide to change to a different employer or profession.
Yeah, I know, once a gov't worker then always a gov't worker.

When Covid becomes history and she is back in the workplace, she might
want to have something to use for her own personal documents. Which
prompts me to ask: What was she using for her personal documentation
needs before Covid pushed her to working at home?

Notepad!?

Kidding, but not quite.

I'm sure I'm not your run-of-the-mill typical user, but I've never
needed to use a 'wordprocessor' type program for my personal
documentation. A 'text editor' is just fine.

I *do* have LibreOffice, but it's just to be able to view other
people's/organization's stuff, which is either needlessly 'fancy' or/and
they can't be bothered to supply a PDF (instead of a .docwhatever).

In a previous life, I had to use a wordprocessor (WordPerfect),
because the customer valued fancy over substance (of my technical
research). It only increased my disgust for fluff.

Thanks for listening. I feel *so* much better now! :-)

On 18/09/2020 12.44, Chris wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:
On 9/17/2020 12:10 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote:

The worst of this is that my friend "needs Word" for working at home
because of the pandemic, thus her employer should be providing any
software needed at their expense, but apparently they will not :-/

You sure MS Word is a mandate dictated by her employer? Maybe she just
thinks it is a mandate from her employer? More likely they just want
her to work on Word documents.


Or create documents in .doc or .docx format. As long as she did, her
employer would be highly unlikely to know what program she was using.

Round tripping .doc(x) files through LO invariably changes the formatting
and if you've got anything complex then chances are that it gets screwed
up. At one time I tried to use LO/OO for a couple of years with colleagues
who used Word and in the end it just wasn't worth the effort.

For home where you're the only person working on the documents then LO is
perfect.

In this case, on her old laptop Word would not do the conversion to PDF,
and being confined I could not have a look. So she mailed me the .docx,
and I did the conversion to PDF using LO in Linux. Nobody noticed.

They are quite simple documents.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 18/09/2020 18.27, VanguardLH wrote:
Chris wrote:

Many employers don't allow employees to choose where to store files.

Did her school provide her with VPN access to their network?

No. They provide a web page with a login and tools, and they provide
Gmail for groups.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 18/09/2020 18.16, VanguardLH wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

If she leaves that employer, she loses the license to Office. She
might to use something she gets to keep for her own use and even
with her next employer having her work from home.

No risk of that - these are permanent jobs :-)

*She* could decide to change to a different employer or profession.
Yeah, I know, once a gov't worker then always a gov't worker.

Even in that case they keep a virtual post. I don't know the name in
English. My mother used it: when she married she left, and when I was
about 12 she decided to go back, so she just filled a request to go
back. She got it with no fuss. Full rights.


When Covid becomes history and she is back in the workplace, she might
want to have something to use for her own personal documents. Which
prompts me to ask: What was she using for her personal documentation
needs before Covid pushed her to working at home?

Pen :-D

No, she had an old HP laptop with dead battery that apparently came with
Word installed. But nobody had done a proper backup, so as it had to be
formatted several times they installed a pirated copy, I guess, instead
of restoring the backup with proper licenses. No, that wasn't my doing.

She is definitely not a computer geek.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 18/09/2020 18.27, VanguardLH wrote:
Chris wrote:

Many employers don't allow employees to choose where to store files.

Did her school provide her with VPN access to their network?

No. They provide a web page with a login and tools, and they provide
Gmail for groups.

Then they could well be breaking GDPR rules. No "personal information"
should be stored on, nor sent via, unsecured mechanisms - personal info
includes students' details. Email is not a secure mechanism by any stretch
of the imagination.

VanguardLH wrote:
Chris wrote:

Many employers don't allow employees to choose where to store files.

Did her school provide her with VPN access to their network? Otherwise,
they don't get to choose where are her files that she sends them (from
her offline or online storage across the Internet to their "safe"
storage service).

Sure they do. Employees still have to comply with business obligations and
legal regulations. WFH doesn't change that.

A VPN makes life easier, but isn't the only way to achieve security.

Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 18/09/2020 12.44, Chris wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:
On 9/17/2020 12:10 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote:

The worst of this is that my friend "needs Word" for working at home
because of the pandemic, thus her employer should be providing any
software needed at their expense, but apparently they will not :-/

You sure MS Word is a mandate dictated by her employer? Maybe she just
thinks it is a mandate from her employer? More likely they just want
her to work on Word documents.


Or create documents in .doc or .docx format. As long as she did, her
employer would be highly unlikely to know what program she was using.

Round tripping .doc(x) files through LO invariably changes the formatting
and if you've got anything complex then chances are that it gets screwed
up. At one time I tried to use LO/OO for a couple of years with colleagues
who used Word and in the end it just wasn't worth the effort.

For home where you're the only person working on the documents then LO is
perfect.

In this case, on her old laptop Word would not do the conversion to PDF,
and being confined I could not have a look. So she mailed me the .docx,
and I did the conversion to PDF using LO in Linux. Nobody noticed.

They are quite simple documents.

Yep PDF is usually a good solution.

On 18/09/2020 23.39, Chris wrote:
Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 18/09/2020 18.27, VanguardLH wrote:
Chris wrote:

Many employers don't allow employees to choose where to store files.

Did her school provide her with VPN access to their network?

No. They provide a web page with a login and tools, and they provide
Gmail for groups.

Then they could well be breaking GDPR rules. No "personal information"
should be stored on, nor sent via, unsecured mechanisms - personal info
includes students' details. Email is not a secure mechanism by any stretch
of the imagination.

Well, "Gmail for groups" claims privacy, it is not the same as "personal
Gmail". Problem is, the students themselves don't seem to have an
account there, so email to them would be "on the wild".

irony mode on.

However, politicians wrote a law that orders email to be private and
that nobody can read it. Who cares if email is not really so? As far as
they care, they ordered it to be secure, under penalty of imprisonment.
If anyone reads the wrong email, he can go to prison. Problem solved.

:-P


--
Cheers, Carlos.