The Office suite dilemma

So imagine you're the IT guy in an office/small government administration environment full of computer idiocy. Currently they are using an ancient version of Microsoft Office like 2007 which is starting to be incompatible with newer documents and computers.

You have to make the transition to a newer Office suite, considering that
>Staff is used to MSO 2007 and are not willing to change much
>A Newer MS office License is 100€ per user per year, which you cannot afford

Your options would be
>Change to Libre Office, free but with a steep lerning curve, may lower productivity, and has incompatibilities with MS Office documents, power users may find it incomplete
>change to Google Docs, 5€ a month or free versions, the free version would be a pain in the ass to manage, the pro version is not much cheaper than Microsft's one with dedicated desktop apps
>Change to WPS Office, with a lower learning curve, free with ads or 70€ for a Lifelong license (20 € anually), your content may not be of interest to the chinese government
>Pirate or adquire a shady license of Ebay, risk of fines, etc.
>A different option or a mix of the above

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If all they are using is Word and they arent using super advanced Excel functionality than go with LO.

upgrade them, it's not your money.

I've just been putting libre office onall the new machines as I swap them out, I just tell people it's what we can get and offer open office if they prefer. No one has offered more than a sentence or two of complaint and they pick it up pretty fast. They don't really do anything deep though with it either, so maybe less useful.

If the only issue is compatibility why not consider using Libreoffice just to convert the documents to something Orifice2007 can work with?

In a way this user is right

you might even get fired for trying to save them money

maybe make a memo explaining how to use it

like show the equivalent function in office 2007 and LO

Yeah, I think paying for MS Office licenses for power users and leave the rest using Libre Office is the more sensible option.

Present the options to the boss with a breakdown of the pros and cons of each as well as the general cost you're expecting to cover fees for every computer. Chances are he'll see MS office and select that one anyway because the $20k a year or whatever it'll cost as cheap compared to other shit he's signed off on.

>"Staff is used to MSO 2007 and are not willing to change much"
That's the deathknell right there, even if you had a budget.

>No budget
Libreoffice is garbage compared to Office365 paid suite. Switching to libreoffice will plummet productivity and they'll blame YOU for it.
(There is budget, but they've spent it on social service)

tl;dr go with the cheapest version of office that is still supported (it's office365 because microsoft is jews)

If you can't get a budget for another micro$oft suite, fucking leave because there's just no way to win this.

>small government administration
Pirate then. Aren't you safe to pirate within government administrations?

>LO
>steep lerning curve

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If your office can't afford $100 per user upgrade and has to use Libre out of financial necessity, then you are already fucked and it just doesn't matter anymore.

>Libre office
>learning curve
You're joking. Since when do office jockies need to do anything fancier than putting a header or page numbers?

If you do go with libreoffice, be sure to set the default save formats to docx, xlsx etc. I'm fairly sure that I've used an ADM/ADMX template before to do this with group policy.
Also, if you really have to, you can buy office home or business licences as one-offs rather than subscriptions although managing the keys becomes difficult and you can't deploy with GP directly so will have to script it or install and activate individually.
t. ex admin who was in this exact same position several years ago

You need to go back to Jow ForumsSysadmin

Do not underestimate the stupidity of people.

I know. Some people even choose to use proprietary operating systems. Their stupidity knows no bounds.

XDDDDD

>can't afford $100 a person per year
Oh no no no no no

Just stick with 2007, it just werks

Office365 if you send or receive any documents as .doc/.docx files to any other business.
If you don't *ever* do that (plenty of businesses) - then you can probably get by retraining to LibreOffice.

Don't rely on googledocs, they're worse on pricing in the long run than Microsoft.

Just stick with old computers. There are Banks that use still use DOS software, because shit works. If it's really starting to break, then the boss will have to spare some cash for upgrades, licenses and training.

Your problem is that you're acting like these people are your friends. They're your customers and you're being paid to service them. Take it as your job - which it literally is.

Your boss doesn't know shit about tech but thinks he does. You need to talk to him in his language - money. Get a few test employees selected at random to use libre office and document their productivity changes. If this decreases by x % then subtract x% from each salary per hour across the business and that is the cost of going with libre compared to updating MS Office.

Didn't some German municipality tried Libre Office and noped the fuck out a few years later.

Yes, but the issues stemmed from .doc/.docx compatibility not from issues with the software itself and general document creation.

This applies.
If you need to, for any reason, transfer documents AS .doc or .docx into or outside of the company as part of your daily business, get MSOffice or Office365.
If you don't need to transfer actual .doc/.docx files (lots of businesses - do you think a local hardware chain needs to transfer .doc files to other businesses regularly - would .pdfs do? would printed invoices and email correspondence do?) then LibreOffice can be fine.

Any change will temporarily lower productivity, but if everyone around you still needs files that only work properly in MSOffice, you'd be a fool to go LibreOffice as the lowered productivity will be permanent.

For my own business I went with Google Docs. And if needed Libre Office can be used for offline use.

For someone elses business I would just MS Office.

I don’t think the productivity is bad on LO compared to Office (2018 - 11)

> So imagine you're the IT guy in an office/small government administration environment full of computer idiocy
Why would I care then? It's not me who will use the office software or benefit from its proper adoption by office staff in any way. I would probably use anything from the list which interface is the most similar to MSO or intuitive. Price doesn't matter since it's not me who pays.