[SOLVED] Recommend Spreadsheet Program for Excel 97-2003 Files

[Appletax]

Solution: LibreOffice.

FYI: LibreOffice has a ribbon-style menu that you can switch to.

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Guy brought to me an ancient Dell Dimension 2400 desktop PC that was a piece of junk when he got it way back in 2004.

It is so old that Dell Support can't find it using the Service Tag lol.

It has XP, 512MB of DDR 1 RAM, and a Celeron processor with a PassMark CPU score of 143.

Super dooper bad!

It is blue screening. The CPU fan is loud. The disc drive doesn't open. It's super dusty.

I am upgrading him to a 4th gen quad core i5, 8GB RAM, SSD, and Win 10 Pro.

All the data he cares about is stored on an 8GB flash drive. There's 7.24 of 7.30GB free space left lol.

He only used the PC for spreadsheets.

What program should I put on the new computer for him to use for the Excel files?

I want to run a product key finder on his old PC to see if it had an Office version that'd work with Win 10 (doubt it), but I can't get it to boot and don't have a PATA to USB adapter.

There's LibreOffice and FreeOffice. Hope they would make sense to him.

Here's a screenshot of one of his spreadsheets so you can see what he's doing with them (some info removed):

 

[Diggs]

I wave the LibreOffice flag and have used it for many years since I come from a Linux background. Those that poo-poo LibreOffice are those that don't accept change well. It's quite capable, just different.

 

[HCHTech]

Is this some kind of trick question? He should put Excel on his new computer to read his Excel files. That's the one he is used to - why make him learn something new?

 

[nlinecomputers]

Current versions of office can read the old formats. https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Personal-12-month-subscription-Auto-renewal/dp/B07F3TQ6DQ

 

[nlinecomputers]

https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Business-One-time-purchase-Download/dp/B09H7F77JR

 

[cypress]

Yeah I would have him purchase the Office 365 license with the latest version of Excel. Office Libre is nice and I use it often but Excel is what he is used to and it is backwards compatible.

 

[Appletax]

Yea, I don't think he's gonna wanna spend that much money to be able to do simple spreadsheets.

Office costs more than the computer I am selling him!

I will just put LibreOffice and FreeOffice on it and he can test them out.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Look at https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

 

[Nathan Igo]

LibreOffice is what I always recommend for people that don't want to pay for an Office license. Most likely he had an old version of Office like 2007 or 2004 I think before that so Libre would even look closer to what he remembers versus the new versions. Just make sure to set the default save files to xls or xlsx in the options in case he creates a new one and sends it somewhere.

 

[Mick]

If he's used to using an Excel version of the same vintage as the PC, then he's going to find a new version of Excel horribly unfamiliar, thanks to the clumsy 'ribbon' menus. I still do - and I use it every other day! Libre and the rest have much more of an 'Office 2003' look to them

 

[Diggs]

Just make sure to set the default save files to xls or xlsx in the options in case he creates a new one and sends it somewhere.

This! I usually install LibreOffice on the refurbs I send out if the customer has no plans for MS Office. I set Write, Calc and Impress to default to the MS file formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx). Saves a bunch of frustration and confusion. In turn, LibreOffice handles considerably more file formats than MS Office.

 

[Appletax]

I installed the guy's Office 2003 and it permanently broke Windows updates to where I had to do another nuke and pave.

Installed LibreOffice and it opens his very old spreadsheets fine. He has not contact me since picking up the PC, so he must like it just fine.