Microsoft Office 2013

[Micromegas]

I really don't bitch much but this pisses me off.

So the reason I haven't posted any photos for a while is because my edition of Microsoft Office 2010 expired. So I finally bit the bullet and purchased MO 2013 for $120 and a few hours of waiting for the bloody thing to download...

and then I find out Microsoft Office Picture Manager has been REMOVED from 2013 Office which was the easiest to use and most convenient program for resizing photos to post online as well as resaving them to your hard drive. I really don't need all the other programs in office i just wanted the photo manager.

My second motivation was to connect to Outlook for emails because Gmail has turned into a flaming pile of shit but of course that is more complicated than I anticipated as well since I'm pretty short on details about internet service provider.

Why is there a trend as new software replaces old, programs become more complicated and inextricably linked to some ridiculous Cloud or online cyber space instead of the good old tried and true methods, now everything become linked with everything else and most services set traps that are hard to get around, Google + is a fucking monster and now microsoft office!!

It really frustrates me as I mostly just wanted Microsoft Office to function in the same was as MO 2010 and not need to use some third party cyber-space program to alter photo size.

Maybe this is all fine for those who are cyber-savvy, personally I just want things to work without having to link this with that and download 10 million add ons and supplementary programs just to take a piss in a tea cup.

Haha, so no more photos still for a while!

[Foo]

Once you get used to 2013 its not that bad.

You can easily setup your gmail account with outlook btw. Or have a look on whirlpool for instructions re setting for the email your ISP provides.

With re-sizing photos, you should just be able to use paint, wich has gained a small amount of functionality in 2013.

Or if your really stuck on Pictur Manager: How to get picture manager with 2013

[Darklight]

I totally agree with the OP about stupid forced commercial upgrades, but why the hell are you paying for M$ at all?

There are shitloads of FOSS ( Free Open Source Software ) office bundles out there, the only upgrades you need are usually less frequent than those required by commercial vendors.

If you are only doing home document stuff it should be easy to make the switch, if you are managing long multilinked databases and mailouts it could take a while longer.

Right now most of these packages can handle opening and editing MSOffice files but I expect Microsoft will try to find a way to make that harder in future as several governments and departments overseas are requiring that MS products *not* be used and favouring FOSS

Advantages include, aside from being free, most of these take up less hard drive space

ABIWord

http://abisource.org/screenshots/

The smallest of the office suite packages, perfectly fine for a lot of day to day use. I was really pleasantly surprised at how much this had progressed when i used it on a small Linux distro for Raspberry Pi- it handled all my documents from a multitude of packages very well

Libre Office

http://www.libreoffice.org/home/Discover

Smooth and very functional for more complex documents

OpenOffice

http://www.openoffice.org/

Pretty similar to the above

GIMP ( Gnu Image Manipulation project )

http://www.gimp.org/

Quite possibly more graphics power than you will ever need, certainly more than I will.

These all run on Windows

I ditched MS and Windoze for Linux and FOSS years ago and have not ever regretted it. All my hardware runs heaps faster, I don't need to upgrade to new boxes to feed MS habits for ever increasing resources, plus I don't need to run antivirus in the background because I'm not running as root/ admin in my own setup.

[at0m]

And don't forget Thunderbird for emails!

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

[Micromegas]

Haha Darklight because it is hard to teach old dogs new tricks. I really only do basic things and i've been doing basic things on Microsoft since university i hadn't even considered there may be alternative options. I have no idea what Linux or FOSS is and my level of concentration is very poor when it comes to such things.

I will continue to use MS now have paid for it and because I am a stick in the mud. Word looks not too bad in the 2013 version and the outlook thing should be a simple enough exercise. So yeah eatfoo you might be right maybe not so bad but i really wanted picture manager. I had a bit of a look around about downloading it from somewhere but all the links I tried are no longer valid.

It didn't come with paint so no good there. I'll have a look around some more later i've had enough for the day. Why can't some things just stay the same I was doing fine!!

[Sallubrious]

Can't you just get a batch resize program that wipes the exif data ?

I haven't used windows for well over 10 years so I can't make any suggestions.

[gtarman]

IMO Microsoft Office was good enough and attained the peak of its usability in 2003. Ever since then I think all Microsoft products, including their OS software has really just been an exercise in (often illogical) re-arrangement and subsequent money-grubbing.

This is also why a lot of open-source software has much the same in terms of layout and functionality as those older versions of MO did back in the day. Because it works. I'd go Open Office above Microsuck any day of the week. And for those who want something like a basic version of Photoshop, I've found Photoscape to be really feature-packed and intuitive (and free!). GIMP is also really powerful, as said, but higher learning curve in my opinion..YMMV

[Foo]

I will continue to use MS now have paid for it and because I am a stick in the mud. Word looks not too bad in the 2013 version and the outlook thing should be a simple enough exercise. So yeah eatfoo you might be right maybe not so bad but i really wanted picture manager. I had a bit of a look around about downloading it from somewhere but all the links I tried are no longer valid.

Try the link in post 2. If your having trouble let me know. It shouldn't be any trouble at all to re-install picture viewer

[Micromegas]

Can't you just get a batch resize program that wipes the exif data ?

I have absolutely no idea what that means.

Thanks eatfoo I missed the link yesterday. I can't quite get it to work. I'm going to leave it a few days until I have the mental acuity to try again!

[Micromegas]

Sweet let's see if this works!

It appears you can compress pictures in the 2013 version of word about as easily as picture manager.

Thanks for the help and suggestions. I'm a bit slow with the technology sometimes!

Edit: pity it loads it onto a whole new page better when they just open on top of the forum page.

Anyway rant and bitch mostly over.

Edit two: haha I don't know this time it loaded larger and on top of the forum page!

[ballzac]

I don't know why people use GIMP to be honest. It's pretty useless as a full blown image processing tool, but has enough features to make it more complicated than it needs to be for basic tasks. Image editing is one thing that the free, open-source community hasn't managed to crack, as there is nothing with the power of PSP or photoshop. While every other type of program I know of has a seriously competitive free version. Having said that, if you just want to be able to do some very basic manipulations like cropping and resizing, there are multiple options. I use IrfanView at the moment. You can easily use it as your default image viewer, and it loads images faster, and supports more filetypes, than any other program I am aware of. And when you want to crop, resize, or save as a different format, it's very easy to get done quickly.