Taking a plunge into a different software decade

[The_Doc_Man]

I found an online software sales company with a decent rating and they were offering Office 2021 Pro, 3-seat license, for a discount due to its age. My old version of Ofc2010 was working, but I couldn't resist the price. I have my original 2010 kit if I have to revert, and I also have a good anti-viral package, so I am going to take the plunge and try to figure out what is going on when I update my various documents - lots of Word, quite a bit of Access, occasional Excel, and bits and pieces of other stuff. I'll do a backup of my "My Documents" folder beforehand, just in case.

Just for snorts and giggles, does anyone have advice regarding the leap from Ofc2010 to Ofc2021? (Both cases, 32-bit!) And I noted with some curiosity that the company had both 32-bit and 64-bit downloads for various countries but ONLY 64-bit for the Netherlands. Can one of our Netherlands members shed some light on that odd omission? Is there a rule somewhere barring the use of the 32-bit version of Office there? (Or did I remember it wrong and it was only 32-bit versions available?) But either way, why the omission?

 

[Isaac]

Just curious why you use the 32 bit of Office?

 

[Foster2019]

There's no difference between 32bit and 64bit versions of office, in terms of user experience, layout etc.

However, 64bit office can only work on a computer with a 64bit processor. 32bit office will work on both, 32bit and 64bit computers.

If you have a 64bit computer though, you should really be using 64bit office to benefit from the 64bit processor.

64bit processors are capable of performing more calculations per second as they process bigger chunks of data. They have other benefits such as allowing the operating system to utilise more ram. There are no desktop 32bit computers being built today. The last one would have been in the very early 2000’s. There are charity’s out there that refurbish computers and donate them to good causes, that choose to scrap anything with a 32bit processor as they are that outdated and not worth their time.

I assume you're buying second hand licences from a company that no longer uses them. I'm entirely guessing here. Maybe the company in the Netherlands upgraded their computers ages ago and so never bothered to buy the 32bit licences, therefore having none for sale.

In terms of the differences between office 2010 and 2021. They’re not drastic, like moving from MS access 2003 to MS access 2010. There are probably more templates to choose from in all office programmes. And I think they’ve made selecting formulas easier in excel. But there isn’t really a learning curve. You should be ok.

 

[Steve R.]

How about a really radical "plunge into a different software decade".

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The software is free so there is no need to buy a license. It is supposed to be compatible with Microsoft Office. The only obvious downside, it would not be (directly) compatible with MS Access.

Feature Comparison: LibreOffice - Microsoft Office - The Document Foundation Wiki

wiki.documentfoundation.org

 

[Isaac]

Thanks, but I'm curious from doc himself why he's using 32-bit? Do you actually have a computer running 32-bit windows? Been a long time since I needed or wanted to use office 32 bits so I'm just curious

 

[Pat Hartman]

I also run 32-bit Office. It has to do with being compatible with my clients. It has nothing to do with the bitness of the Hardware.
PC chips have been 64 bits for decades. Windows tends to go along with the hardware bitness so most computers are 64-bit and will therefore be running 64-bit Windows. That doesn't mean that they need to also run 64-bit Office. I am probably going to stick with 32-bit Office until someone makes me change.

You can run 32 bit Windows on 64-bit hardware but if you were to do that, you would be limited to only running 32 bit other software whereas if you are running 64 bit Windows, you can run 32 bit or 64 bit other software.

I only have one situation where I have a problem because I'm using a Windows API and so I have code in that database that handles the long pointer issue.

There is nothing about 64-bit Office that offers me any advantage. Although, I think there may have been some recent improvements to memory management with Access that might keep really large databases from running out of memory. I don't have any existing applications that are experiencing any problems so "if it ain't broke, it don't need fixin".

 

[The_Doc_Man]

My older databases were written under 32-bit Office and as we know, the References list for 64-bit vs. 32-bit are quite different. In particular, my genealogy database involves both Excel and Word app objects as well as some older libraries. And while I know it is POSSIBLE to build a 1 million row spreadsheet, I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon. So I don't need the larger Word/Excel data sizes that come with 64-bit versions.

When I was still with the Navy, we had a newer version of Office than 2010 and I found that the 32-bit versions (I think for 2013) would correctly handle quad integer data type. I am running Windows 10/64-bit so I think I'll be able to handle whatever I can build with Ofc 2021. Which is probably the last version of Office I will ever buy.

Just finished making my backups because I'm getting ready to uninstall Office 2010 and install 2021. But I have a CD kit for Office 2010 if it all goes west on me.

@Foster2019 - As to the licenses, this site doesn't SAY the licenses are used. I get the impression it is more like an inventory clean-out for old, unsold licenses of Ofc2021 Pro, which is one they DON'T sell as often as the lesser versions. And the company isn't from the Netherlands, it was just that their table of downloadables was missing one of the bitnesses for the Netherlands download, but had both bitnesses for the other places on the list. On the other hand, I guess it is possible that they sold out of one of the bitnesses for the Dutch language.

 

[Pat Hartman]

And while I know it is POSSIBLE to build a 1 million row spreadsheet,

One of my assignments a few years ago was to train a group of analysts who were working with million row spreadsheets how to use Access for at least some minimum pre-processing to cut down the time they spent each running models. This company was an energy reseller and every day each analyst downloaded huge files from various utility companies which they manipulated and then fed into their models. The typical day started with the downloads. Then starting a vLookup() and going out to breakfast for three hours while it ran. Using A join in Access the file could be updated in a couple of minutes including the import/export time. Some of them became good students and learned enough SQL and VBA to do a lot of the work in Access and then export a smaller, pre-processed file into their models which then also ran much faster.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Supplement: Access benefited the least from the 64-bit expansion because the 2 GB limit is still in place, meaning their internal addresses are still in place as well. So I stayed with 32-bit Office. Word 32-bit has no trouble handling my novels and my biggest spreadsheet is practically nil - maybe a two-or-three page thing at most, so I didn't need any of the features that 64-bit would have offered.

 

[Isaac]

my biggest spreadsheet is practically nil - maybe a two-or-three page thing at most

One of the niftiest (ok, maybe the only nifty) thing(s) about the post-2007 world is that I save just about everything as .XLSB.
When dealing with relatively good-sized .xlsx's, re-saving as .xlsb instead will save on average about 40% file size. AND it allows macros, so you don't have to even think about it - you can just use .xlsb for everything.

random though/tip for anyone happening along this page