If you’re looking for a free Office-compatible suite then there’s plenty of choice around, with tools like and OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice.org offering a host of powerful features.

Another option is simply to install Microsoft’s Office 2010 Starter edition, though. It’s cut down, but still has more than enough functionality for many purposes, and can be used without a product key.

The package only includes Word and Excel, and if you’re familiar with the regular editions then running either of these will quickly reveal some limitations.

There are less tabs on the ribbon, for instance (References, Review and View are all missing from Word). The other tabs have fewer options: click Insert in Word and there are no SmartArt, Bookmark, Cross Reference, Quick Parts or Equations buttons. And as you use the programs so you’ll encounter other restrictions: no table of contents support in Word, for instance, and no PivotTables or password protection in Excel.

The programs also display ads next to your documents. These are small and unobtrusive, no web-like animations to distract you, but they still take up valuable screen real estate which now isn’t available to your documents.

By way of compensation, though, the Office Starter “Tools” menu includes Microsoft’s “Office Starter To-Go Device Manager”, which allows you to create a portable version of the suite which you can save on a USB flash drive and use on any convenient Vista or Windows 7 PC.

And while it is a little cut down, which may cause problems if you have to import complex documents created by others, there’s still plenty of functionality here for basic letter and report writing, organising your finances in Excel Starter, and more. So if your requirements aren’t too strenuous then give Office 2010 Starter a look: it could provide enough to satisfy all your productivity software needs.

2 tips for better use of Excel today

The following video shows you some cool ways to autofill cells and use of the 'Paste Special' options

(download)

Click here to download:

Excel-Fill-Transpose_controller[1].swf (186 KB)

This page has some ideas on ways to format your spreadsheets for printing including how to fit to pages, etc

Both the above are courtesy of HP Australia

You may recall that we have previously offered some excellent free training manuals for Office 2003 & Office 2007
They are still availabl for free download at the following address Microsoft Office Training
There are zipped pdf documents for each part of office - Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher and even Visio
Many/Most of the tips in the 2003 documents will apply to earlier versions and likewise the 2007 tips will apply in the latest 2010 ribbon version of Office
Check them out - you can't do better than free!

Most of us use Microsoft Office on our PC’s especially if you have a work/corporate computer. The menu system and toolbars has been basically similar through all the evolutions of office up to and including Office 2003. However with Office 2007 Microsoft introduced the new ‘Ribbon’ interface which is a sort of context aware tabbed toolbar and options. ‘Context aware’ means it changes depending on what you are doing at the time. The Ribbon is available in most Office programs including Word & Excel but only in  a limited fashion in Publisher and Outlook.

I actually like the new ribbon menu and once you get used to it, it is very useable. Plus we need to get used to the Ribbon-type system as Microsoft is bringing it to all of their programs over time.

Now of course when you make a change to a program as common as Office you alienate a number of users. So I wasn’t surprised when I ran across an item on Lifehacker the other day referring to a way to customise the menu system in Office 2007 to include the old 2003 menus in one of the Ribbon Tabs.

The article referred me to the Ribbon Customizer website. I downloaded the free Starter Edition and I found it quite useful. However a bit more searching led me to a similar program called UBitMenu and I like the way this one achieves the same outcome.

Office 2007’s Ribbon interface remains a love-it-or-hate-it affair for money, and for those of you who miss the Microsoft Office 2003 menu that’s entrenched in your muscle memory, UBitMenu can help. This plug-in adds a new Menu entry to the Office 2007 ribbon (specifically in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). When clicked, your ribbon displays the classic Office 2003 menu, complete with the buttons and file menus you’re used to from your old Office 2003 install. Not every single bit of functionality remains in the UBitMenu toolbar as is available in Office 2003—due mostly to changes in Office—but most of the features you’re used to remain in all their glory. Even if you’re keen on the Office 2007 ribbon, UBitMenu is a nice tool to ease the transition from 2003 to 2007.

We have also discussed Search Commands in the past. This add-on from the Office Labs provides a way to search through the Office menu options if you don’t know where a certain function is hiding. It also offers Guided Help which is like a mini-tutorial on how to use some functions. You can add this function as well as one of the ‘old’ menus above

You know there’s a button for it, but you don’t know or remember where it is. If this ever happens to you, check out Search Commands. You can use this concept test today to quickly find the commands you need in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just search with your own words and click on the command you need. It also includes Guided Help, which acts as a tour guide for the specific tasks you’re looking for.

For those who are totally frustrated with Office I have another alternative – Open Office. OO is a totally different program but has a menu structure that is similar to that used in MS Office of recent years. It is a very powerful program and is fully compatible in most cases with Office document formats. Oh yeah, and it totally FREE!

If you are setting up a new computer for Home use there is no reason to pay $150 or more to have MS Office

So there you go – a number of ways to make using Microsoft Office 2007 easier to use or indeed replace it all together

References
LifeHacker - UBitMenu