I'm in a little bit of a pickle. I have MS Office Pro 2003 installed on my home computers. Until recently I have been able share files with work without a problem. But newer Office files are not playing nice with my older version of MS Office. I have the compatibility pack installed, but that only allows for one-way conversions; sometimes with lost features.
I downloaded and installed the latest copy of
Kingsoft WPS Office, and found that it has improved compared to the last time I took it for a spin about 2 or 3 years ago. I recall that the older version could not properly convert a heavily formatted Excel file. The latest version of WPS Office does the conversion quite nicely, even if it isn't perfect. But more importantly it does not pooch the formatting.
However, the free WPS Office version does not handle macros. The paid version (WPS Office Pro) does, but the one showstopper I have is that WPS Office does not have a replacement for MS Access. No other Office replacements do the job as well as WPS Office either.
I have 2 other options. One is to keep what I have and only work out of an office computer, but this is far from ideal. The other is to purchase
MS Office Pro 2010, currently selling for $139.99 at Amazon. This is for the Academic version, with no verification required. I would then have to use
UBitMenu to undo the miserable ribbon interface.
Buying MS Office Pro 2010 seems to be my best solution. But I hate the idea of rewarding MS for what I perceive as a bloated, crappy product. I really like WPS Office and how smooth it is, and I admit that I really like the idea of free vs. paid. But without a replacement for Access, it's only a partial solution. Actually I'd need to buy the
WPS Office Pro version for $69.95, as I need to be able to write macros.
For now I keep limping along with MS Office Pro 2003.