Solved Is Windows Office 2013 too old?

I'm currently using Office Professional 2016 on Windows 11 and have not had any issues at all.
On a side note, I do have my "very old" copy of Office 95. It was the first version of MS Office I used back in the day.

I'm currently using Office Pro Plus 2019 on before Windows 10 then upgrade to 11 no issues.

Personally, still using a 3 license version of 2010 Pro on 3 devices (1 x Win 10, 2 x Win 11).

But also do volunteer work for a NFP organisation with Office 2010 VLK installed on multiple devices .... all primarily because of availability of MS Access and MS Publisher

Rest of organisation uses LibreOffice, set to default Save as > LibreWriter .docx and LibreCalc .xlsx files, to ensure compatibility.

I came across this 2-year-old post about your Windows Office 2013 issue, and I feel your frustration. It must have been quite disappointing to see that it didn't work with your new Windows 11 PC back then!

Hi there

Office 2010 still works perfectly even on the latest "Birdie" (Canary) build of W11 both in its 32 and 64 bit options (Ms Office of course here as W11 itself is only 64 bit !!!! -- English as written is far more demanding than speaking -- especially as a 2nd lang !!!!). .

As for Ms Office it depends on what you need -- for 99.999% of people who aren't "Power users" and aren't bothered with loads of things like Work collaboration, teams stuff etc. there's no reason to upgrade -- but if you have to have an Office product compatible with Ms Offce and you don't have a license for Ms Office (any edition) and don't use embedded VBA macros then WPS office (also works on Linux) is a good product (FREE) and is rarely mentioned on these Forums -- far better than the common alternatives.

Note like most " Ms Office clones" there's no email client included so you'll have to get that separately.

The "Non Free "stuff also allegedly says it is comptable with VBA etc - but most don't need it.


If you need a decent (Free) email client then Thunderbird is now one of the better alternatives - especially since it's back now in development in spite of a few years ago being almost relagated to "Abandonware".


Cheers
jimbo

Guess who's running Office 2000? Also using Open Office for newer MS Office files. E-mail is done with eMclient or the ISP's web based e-mail app.

For me, Microsoft 365, at a subscription price of $69 per year, is a no-brainer! My MS Office is always up to date and 1 Terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage is included.

Still sticking to 2013, got it for free. I'm mostly using MS Publisher and that haven't changed much since 2000.

I use Office 2017 and have friends online still able to use Office 2003 to 2017 on Windows 11.

Always Why said:

2017

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2007?

Denis

Brink said:

Support for Office 2013 has ended

As mentioned in previous posts, 11/11/2021 and on 11/15/2022, Office 2013 reached the end of the Extended Support lifecycle on April 11, 2023. Continuing to use Office 2013 could increase your organization’s exposure to security risks, impact your ability to meet compliance obligations, and/or...

www.elevenforum.com

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I stopped updates long time ago.

I laughed just now while I was reading this thread while working remotely on a friends PC waiting on Ofc 2007 to install.. Recently, she had bought a new computer and I had convinced her to buy Office 2021 for cheap with one of the offers mentioned here, She called me today screaming and griping about how much she hated 2021 and wanted her old 2007 Ofc back. Naturally it was on a cd and she had no cd drive anymore. I had to upload my old copy to the cloud and then download it to her.
It's so weird that I was reading this thread at the same time.

I'll admit here (though not to her) that I tend to agree with her. New doesn't always mean better, depending on how one uses the product and how comfortable one is learning something new. 2007 is easier and I should have stuck with it myself. I would have stayed with 2003 which even easier than 2007 had it not been for reading docx files. Old products will do for most folks needs so as long as Windows will run them, why change.

glasskuter said:

I laughed just now while I was reading this thread while working remotely on a friends PC waiting on Ofc 2007 to install.. Recently, she had bought a new computer and I had convinced her to buy Office 2021 for cheap with one of the offers mentioned here, She called me today screaming and griping about how much she hated 2021 and wanted her old 2007 Ofc back. Naturally it was on a cd and she had no cd drive anymore. I had to upload my old copy to the cloud and then download it to her.
It's so weird that I was reading this thread at the same time.

I'll admit here (though not to her) that I tend to agree with her. New doesn't always mean better, depending on how one uses the product and how comfortable one is learning something new. 2007 is easier and I should have stuck with it myself. I would have stayed with 2003 which even easier than 2007 had it not been for reading docx files. Old products will do for most folks needs so as long as Windows will run them, why change.

Click to expand...

When Microsoft switched to the ribbon GUI starting with Office 2007 they claimed the user studies determined that the average user could find functions easier with ribbons. Having to search through menus took longer. Because of this a lot of functionality was never or rarely used.

BTW, if you create a lot of Word documents you will save a lot of disk space because .docx files are a lot smaller than comparable .doc ones.

Free programs like LibreOffice and FreeOffice allow you to change the GUI interface anytime between the classic menu style and the new ribbon one. That way the user can pick which GUI they are most comfortable with.

User Interface choices for FreeOffice's TextMaker



TextMaker with Ribbon User Interface



TextMaker with classic Menu User Interface



Maybe you should have stuck with MS Office 2003 because with the MS Office Compatibility pack you could read/write .docx and .xlsx files.

The Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack is an add-on for Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 to open, edit and save Microsoft’s newer Word, Excel and Powerpoint formats that were introduced with Office 2007.

Click to expand...

Description of Office Compatibility Pack SP3

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack Service Pack 3 (SP3) download

Office 2003 with Compatibility Pack

Save with option to save a file with the .docx format



Open with option to open a file with the.docx format

On the rare occasions that I need a spreadsheet, I sometimes use Google Sheets, but it's a much more pleasant experience for me to use Excel from Office 2010. I know it well, it gives me zero grief, it's a whole lot faster than working via a web interface, and it still works fine with Windows 10 and 11. I don't use Word though (or any word processor). I prefer MD (Markdown) text files.

Try3 said:

2007?

Denis

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Yes. Though maybe they download a compatibility patch or have a few errors during installation. I doubt they care about getting Office 2007 updates from Windows Updates.

When I installed Office 2017 on this new computer about two months ago I had no problems and did get all the updates through Windows Updates for Office 2017. You just have to enable "allow updates from Microsoft Products".

I have a lifetime copy of Word 2013 (which I bought on its own - not with office) and still using that on my Windows 10 computer. It can only be used on one computer though so haven't tried it on Windows 11. On the Windows 11 computer I took advantage of that deal mentioned on here and have a copy of Office Professional Plus 2021 for a third of the price I paid for Word 2013.

To be honest Word doesn't look that different between the two versions. It's Paint in Windows 11 I now find fiddly.

Microsoft 365 has a feature that allows you to check your documents for backwards compatibility with earlier versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. To access this feature click File > Info. From there you’ll see a button called Check for Issues. Click on it.

Hazel123 said:

I have a lifetime copy of Word 2013 (which I bought on its own - not with office) and still using that on my Windows 10 computer. It can only be used on one computer though so haven't tried it on Windows 11. On the Windows 11 computer I took advantage of that deal mentioned on here and have a copy of Office Professional Plus 2021 for a third of the price I paid for Word 2013.

To be honest Word doesn't look that different between the two versions. It's Paint in Windows 11 I now find fiddly.

Click to expand...

Back in 1995 I needed Word for a class I was taking. I was tight on money so I found the cheapest way to get Word 95 was to first buy Works 3.0 and then pay for the upgrade to Word 95. BTW, both of these came on floppy disks. I have read that you can still buy Word standalone but I have not seen it anywhere for sale.

When I was taking Office certification classes in 2012 I was able to buy University Office for $99. It was identical to the retail version of Office Professional 2010 which cost about $400. It had one thing that Office today lacks. According to the EULA, you are allowed to install it on two devices as long as the second one is a mobile (laptop) device.

The reason why people are attracted to the unofficial Office Professional Plus 2021 sellers is that the prices are very cheap compare to the official editions as shown below:

Office Home & Student 2021 $149.99
Word, Excel, PowerPoint

Office Home & Business 2021 $249.99
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook

Office Professional 2021 $439.99
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access

Office Professional Plus 2021 ???? (technically not available for retail sales)
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access, Skype for Business

Click to expand...

The main reason I don't like the current version of Paint in Windows 11 is they left off an option to collapse the menu. Its bloated size is very annoying on a laptop screen. For that reason I downloaded the Windows 7 version of paint. Note you can still use the Windows 11 Paint.

Download 7 (classic) Paint

That is exactly the issue with the new Paint version. And thank you for telling me you can't collapse the menu because now I can stop trying to find how to do that! It's ridiculous as you can't fit enough on the screen to highlight something to crop it. Is the Windows 7 version of Paint different from the Windows 10 version? And can you download the Windows 10 version?

The irony is - when I bought Word standalone it was actually the same price as buying the whole Office - I just didn't want the whole office as it was for a low powered computer with a very small drive at the time (ie netbook).

So you mean my copy of office 2021 is unofficial? I'm confused. I remember a lot of discussion about it and some people saying that but others confirming it was official.