Pirating Microsoft Office

[Idontknowwhattoputhere]

Look on reddit for a sub called sjainguides
You will find your paradise there

 

[sarkwalvein]

To be honest, I haven't installed Office on my PC.
I don't really need to use it, I just get around with Google Apps when needed.
If I needed something bigger I would probably just install LibreOffice.

I use Office in the company PC sure, but I don't pay the license myself.
I don't see a need for using Office on my personal PC.

But yeah, sure you can used some pirated office.
If it stops working look for another one I guess.
I don't think it would be a big hassle or a reason to complicate your life around VMs just for using Office.
(VMs will work of course, but why?)

 

[ThoD]

Like other people have stated, use Google docs mainly, as it has MOST of the functions MS Office suite has. If that's not good enough for you or you want an offline option, just use either Libre (for base functions like Word) or OpenOffice for the whole deal (which has pretty much the same functions as MS Office suite but is free) although OpenOffice is a lot larger in size compared to Libre.

 

[x65943]

Where do these come from, as they seem to have a infinite number of them, is there a activation method that generates them?

Edit: this is looking stranger:

Could be bulk accounts associated with universities and businesses

The business spends so much money to be able to provide keys to all of its users - and can generate them willy nilly

Perhaps some IT guy is generating accounts and selling them

 

[Ericthegreat]

Could be bulk accounts associated with universities and businesses

The business spends so much money to be able to provide keys to all of its users - and can generate them willy nilly

Perhaps some IT guy is generating accounts and selling them

I dunno makes sense if they buy 10-15k licenses and 3k just get leftover, if they are charged per license though this is embezzlement.

 

[Fugelmir]

Out of curiosity, why not use openoffice? Or an alternative that is free. There is no reason to pay for a word processing program or spreadsheet.

 

[Ericthegreat]

Out of curiosity, why not use openoffice? Or an alternative that is free. There is no reason to pay for a word processing program or spreadsheet.

Made a resume in open office once, found out it looked like garbage in real ms office (my fault I suppose for not making it into a pdf, but some companies only want .docx (is rare most accept pdf, could be these are the assholes who look at thing like edit history.)

 

[Lacius]

Made a resume in open office once, found out it looked like garbage in real ms office (my fault I suppose for not making it into a pdf, but some companies only want .docx (is rare most accept pdf, could be these are the assholes who look at thing like edit history.)

Did you try Google Docs? That's my recommendation for most people.

 

[Ericthegreat]

Did you try Google Docs? That's my recommendation for most people.

Google docs, I think might still have issues if the place has an older version of office, I am not certain though.

 

[x65943]

Another option is getting a license from a college student (if you know any)

They get it for free most of the time

At my uni we have like 4 options for different versions of office - likely they are only using 1 key for 1 version, and have some keys left over

 

[CORE]

WPS Office or Portable Apps Microsoft Office.

 

[Lacius]

Google docs, I think might still have issues if the place has an older version of office, I am not certain though.

One can easily convert .docx files to .doc files, assuming that's the problem you're describing. Office 2003 and older usually cannot read the newer .docx format introduced in Office 2007. Alternatively, saving the file as .rtf might also work for older versions of Office.

Google Docs natively allows one to download a file as, among others, .docx and .rtf.

 

[Fugelmir]

Another option is getting a license from a college student (if you know any)

They get it for free most of the time

At my uni we have like 4 options for different versions of office - likely they are only using 1 key for 1 version, and have some keys left over

We have this option as well. I abandoned Microsoft office because it takes around 8 seconds to load initially. But I do feel your point: if you import non MS documents into MS Office, the formatting will be off.

 

[FAST6191]

Made a resume in open office once, found out it looked like garbage in real ms office (my fault I suppose for not making it into a pdf, but some companies only want .docx (is rare most accept pdf, could be these are the assholes who look at thing like edit history.)

What timeframe was this? Libre Office forked some years ago (back when Sun was sold to Oracle and things were a bit up in the air) and is the thing most suggest nowadays if you are going to go that way. The Open Office peeps have done some stuff in the years since but most focus went to Libre. While not perfect I tend to find the error rate is about what Microsoft introduces into their own stuff, and for legacy documents it often bears out Microsoft's own efforts.

As for what companies accept what then that will probably vary where you are and what fields you are playing in*. For most of the things I see then PDF works OK, or they will have their own custom application website thing (usually badly written but story for another day there). Those wanting doc tend to be job agencies that aim to scrub your CV of anything identifying (and given the butchery I saw of mine at points over the years... if I said use my CV as vague inspiration for their final work then it would still be selling their efforts short).

*IT companies if they don't have their own are usually pretty good, and might care more about your spiceworks profile or github account, or indeed look favourably upon having something on google docs sent to them if some anecdotes are anything to go by.

 

[blahblah]

LibreOffice is garbage, Google Docs is mega garbage, Office is trivial to pirate.

 

[sarkwalvein]

LibreOffice is garbage, Google Docs is mega garbage, Office is trivial to pirate.

All of that is garbage, use LaTeX! /s
Because opinions.

 

[blahblah]

All of that is garbage, use LaTeX! /s
Because opinions.

LaTeX is a thing where there is a matter of preference. No one actually prefers LibreOffice in any substantive way, it is lacking in almost every department. It is a thing of philosophy, that old GNU garbage that the world looked at and said 'nah' to. Google Docs is minimally functional at best. Excellent for collaboration, awful for everything else.

 

[sarkwalvein]

LaTeX is a thing where there is a matter of preference. No one actually prefers LibreOffice in any substantive way, it is lacking in almost every department. It is a thing of philosophy, that old GNU garbage that the world looked at and said 'nah' to. Google Docs is minimally functional at best. Excellent for collaboration, awful for everything else.

I actually kind of agree oddly.
I still don't think the bare office suite usage you would do on a home PC is worth the hassle of installing anything, thus I swing it with Google docs when it's required.

 

[Viri]

Where do these come from, as they seem to have a infinite number of them, is there a activation method that generates them?

Edit: this is looking stranger:

It's 3 dollars. They give you an edu email probably. I bought an edu email for a dollar, and got free 6 months of Prime, and unlimited Google drive, was well worth the dollar, lol.

 

[FAST6191]

No one actually prefers LibreOffice in any substantive way, it is lacking in almost every department.

I have quite a few clients bubbling along just fine with libre as a daily driver office suite. I will occasionally have a VM or remote machine there for them to have MS office on site (thus far nobody cared for office 365 as an alternative) but when trialling MS Office (current or otherwise) we get pushback or indifference.
Does well enough for their needs, which are fairly typical office needs. The only thing I am remotely aggressive in here is the push towards proper typesetting, desktop publishing, accounting or databases when it becomes apparent it is needed for a long term project. Though I will note for the first two several of those are fairly competent image editors so they tend to opt for that for high end posters, leaflets, brochures and such like, with version control or something resembling it for those and a bit of effort to teach why it is worth having such a workflow (turns out normal office people can appreciate the thing you and I, and every other computer person going, have likely done on several occasions of automate a process/section thereof previously manually sorted and put our feet up afterwards).

I do have others set in their ways (I mostly blame the UK educational system) and if you can be bothered to pay for it and cajole it (when has software ever "just worked"? ) the MS Office is fit enough for task but to dismiss libre office et al out of hand... can't get there.

More surprisingly still was we got some people to break their outlook habit but different discussion there, mainly as that tended to involve tablets and mobile phones.