HOWTO run MSOffice 2003 in Puppy Linux

[jrb]

A) MSOffice97--Success: I was able to follow essentially the instructions early in the thread for installing msoffice97. And despite its age I find that msword97 is a good word processor. Its fairly lightweight (although the added weight of wine is a drag). And it doesn't have the problems with footnotes suffering weird format problems that I encounter with libreoffice, oo, and abiword. Downside is that it can't handle the latest docx files.

I was able to install FileFormatConverters.exe with msoffice97 and open .docx files no problem. Can't save in that format but nobody I work with cares.

I've also been able to install msoffice2007 following instructions from winehq and got word, excel and powerpoint running well. Haven't tried publisher as I don't use it. Access seems hopeless.

Good thread Steve, I wish I had seen it earlier. Cheers, J

[steve_s]

A) MSOffice97--Success: I was able to follow essentially the instructions early in the thread for installing msoffice97. And despite its age I find that msword97 is a good word processor. Its fairly lightweight (although the added weight of wine is a drag). And it doesn't have the problems with footnotes suffering weird format problems that I encounter with libreoffice, oo, and abiword. Downside is that it can't handle the latest docx files.

I was able to install FileFormatConverters.exe with msoffice97 and open .docx files no problem. Can't save in that format but nobody I work with cares.

I've also been able to install msoffice2007 following instructions from winehq and got word, excel and powerpoint running well. Haven't tried publisher as I don't use it. Access seems hopeless.

Good thread Steve, I wish I had seen it earlier. Cheers, J

Thanks, jrb. You got a link for the ms2007 wine page?

[jrb]

You got a link for the ms2007 wine page?

Category: Main > Productivity > Office Suites > Microsoft Office (installer only) > 2007
Just went back and reread this and noticed in the fine print at the bottom:

Known bad Wine versions (do not try to install):
1.3.16
1.3.7
1.3.2
1.2.0 and 1.2.1 (Ubuntu and other distro packages compiled with fortify)
1.1.17 through 1.1.23
all versions prior to 1.1.3 (includes 1.0.1)

I think I originally installed in wine-1.3.6 which is rated platinum for the installer (dumb luck ). I have updated wine a few times, with the same .wine folder, and the apps continue to run well. (I keep a backup .wine.tar.gz for when an install screws up). Am currently on 1.3.14 and will update shortly to 1.3.16.

Note: wine-1.3.6 is still availabe from green_dome at http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 738#462738. Thanks green_dome!

[steve_s]

jrb: thanks!

[sfeeley]

@steve_S

You get error messages or anything?

I can't recall exactly what happened. Unfortunately it probably won't be until next weekend or so that I might decide to try again. I'll take better note of errors when i do.

[sfeeley]

This is an old thread, but I'll post since it still seems to be the definitive one for Microsoft Office

several posts back (and about a year ago) I used the instructions to install MSOFFICE 97. Then I mentioned that it seemed to run well but that wine was a system drag.

Later this year, I got a newer laptop, installed wine, and this time installed MSOFFICE 2003. It seemed to run great--better even than office97. For a long time I attributed this better performace to the fact that this is a newer computer.

Well, today, I copied over the wine installation with Office2003 to the older computer, and what do you know? It works better than 97!

On word97 the processor would cycle between 3%-100% depending on what I was doing. Typing more than a few words at a time would shoot things up to 100%. Performance seemed fine, but the fan would blow.

Now on the same older computer, word2003 runs at a steady 6%-11% with none of the outrageous spikes.

Office2003 is much much larger. But I think most of that is the 350M of extra fonts that comes with it.

Hope this helps somebody.
Maybe there is a flaw in the described method when applied to office97? Maybe office2003 really was an improvement.

EDIT: word2003 runs higher CPU on much larger documents (50 plus pages 150plus footnotes), more in the 60-65% CPU range, but still better than before.

(and if anyone is wondering-- its those footnotes, which libreoffice and abiword tend to mess up, that have me using word)

EDIT #2:
Weird: with word2003, I can't copy something that I composed into my webbased email. (I can copy to abiword, and from there to my email). I can do this with word97