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Seriously, just use Office 365. Otherwise you'll forever be dealing with a constant low grade stream of interoperability glitches. Yes, file formats are usuall

Seriously, just use Office 365. Otherwise you'll forever be dealing with a constant low grade stream of interoperability glitches. Yes, file formats are usually interchangeable. No, that interchangeability is not perfect, especially once you get away from word processing and into spreadsheets and presentations. The majority of people your partner has to work with outside of their charity will be using Office so these small issues will constantly cause friction and frustration. Does your partner want to waste time on those issues or do they want to focus their energy on the good work of the charity? And, since we're talking about a charity, O365 is probably available at a reduced price, or even free.

benrmatthews 6y ago
In the UK, Charity Digital Trust offers free licences for charities using Office 365: https://charitydigital.org.uk/products/microsoft-365-nonprofit-cloud-subscription https://charitydigital.org.uk/products/microsoft-365-nonprof...
- rz2k 6y ago
  For nonprofits in other countries it is worth looking at the TechSoup Global Network which will point you to different countries' equivalent of the charity digital exchange. https://www.techsoup.global/ https://www.techsoup.global/
  - chiefalchemist 6y ago
    I have a pro bono client that went through TechSoup. TS was generally very helpful and knew the MS product line, and so on. They added value.
- adwww 6y ago
  Why do you have to purchase through some random other charity, instead of just buying direct from microsoft.com?
  - turnerc 6y ago
    Microsoft partners with TechSoup to validate charity status, this is their UK affiliate
    - adwww 6y ago
      Classic Microsoft then - complicated vendor relationships instead of just looking up your details on the charity commission register...
bachmeier 6y ago
I want to address this, since it's not the first time I've seen it. > Seriously, just use Office 365. Otherwise you'll forever be dealing with a constant low grade stream of interoperability glitches. The obvious answer is that they're already using an alternative to MS Office if they're using Google, and the reason for the migration is not interoperability issues. Importantly, however, Office 365 is also not a usable alternative if you need perfect interoperability with MS Office files. Trust me on this. I've had an administrative position for the last couple years. Suddenly I went from rarely having to deal with MS Office files to a steady stream of them. No big deal, I thought, since my employer uses Office 365. It's literally a joke to think you can share files with users of the desktop version of MS Office. Many, many times a message has popped up telling me I need to open the file in the desktop version if I want to edit. (And I don't think it supports the older Office files at all.) I mentioned that to the secretary and she just laughed and said you can't do collaborative work with the online version when everyone else uses the desktop version.
- hyperrail 6y ago
  An opposing anecdote: While using the Office web apps, I have rarely seen the "you need to open this file in the Windows desktop version of XYZ to edit the file" message in the last year and a half at Microsoft, a company that intensely uses Microsoft 365. In every case that I can recall, this message showed up in one of 2 cases: 1. Macro-enabled files - there is no VBA or .NET programmability for the web version. 2. Files protected with M365/Azure information protection (DRM/IRM). I don't think either of these scenarios are likely to occur in a charity/nonprofit, which was the original post's concern. As for me personally, I hardly ever wanted to edit files in either category intentionally - the macro-enabled files are old archival docs and the DRMed docs are announcements from executives. > And I don't think it supports the older Office files at all. True. M365 can convert .abc Office files to the .abcx format, save the converted copy, then open it for viewing and editing. That all happens in 1 step but is not the same as supporting the old formats to begin with. > I mentioned that to the secretary and she just laughed and said you can't do collaborative work with the online version when everyone else uses the desktop version. Ironically, I find that to the extent this is true, that's because the desktop version has fewer features. Make a comment on a Word doc? If you did it in the web version, your collaborator gets an email with the comment text, and if they're using the Outlook web or Windows desktop versions, they can even reply to the comment from within the email preview without having to click Reply or open a link to the doc. But if you did it in the desktop version, all your collaborator gets is "Comment previews are coming soon to the version of Word [you] used!" where "soon" has been soon for at least a year and a half.
lewisjoe 6y ago
Since this is the top comment, I want whoever stumbles here to be aware Office 365 isn't all that smooth either. There are things that Google's and Zoho's offerings do much better than Microsoft's. #1 This is 2020 and everybody's collaborating on a single doc with comments. But how do you point someone to a comment with a link? In Office 365, you can't. #2 Until recently office 365 didn't even have a grammar checker / proofing assistant. #3 You've worked on a document and intend to quickly send a pdf over to an email? You download the file, convert to pdf and email it. Even a simple "Send this file as an email attachment" isn't available in their editors. #4 Talking about file-format compatibility, like someone else has pointed out there's no guarantee that documents created in the online version is compatible with their desktop editors. Too bad. #5 In version history, how can you compare two versions of the same file? Well, you can't. Remember for Google and Zoho, cloud based document editors was their target, right from idea to finished product. For Microsoft, it was an afterthought. And it shows.
- maxsilver 6y ago
  > #1 This is 2020 and everybody's collaborating on a single doc with comments. But how do you point someone to a comment with a link? In Office 365, you can't. Counterpoint: This is not a bug, it's the best feature of Office 365. This is a bit of a rant, but the worst thing about Google Docs is how it encourages this terrible working pattern, where everyone wants to edit the same exact document at the same time like some kind of cursed nightmare Etherpad, without any way to reasonably handle merge conflicts, and with comments on comments on markup for lines. And every keystroke you press is logged indefinitely so you can't type anything out without everyone watching over your shoulder. Just a personal opinion, but as a paying Office 365 subscriber, Office 365 is at it's best when it fundamentally rejects Google's workflows and offers it's own. Besides, if what you really want is Google Doc stuff, you can already buy that from Google today anyway.
  - ljm 6y ago
    The UI of it is what bugs me, as the comment boxes slide up and down the page while people are typing, so you have this annoying widget flying around and when you do want to reply to it, you've got to scroll around to try and find the thing again. A comment/request suggestion feature sounds like a good one, but I think the way Google did it is far from ideal.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
oarsinsync 6y ago
If the OP insists on not going down the O365 route (which will probably come with the same lack of guaranteed storage in the UK, which I believe is Brexit related as Google migrated my data out of the EU this year as well), the best recommendations I've seen as far as interop support actually goes is OnlyOffice combined with NextCloud. I haven't used it myself, but a number of people on this forum have advised that it's got significantly better compatibility with MS Office than any of the other contenders. This may have been in word processing only, however, and as the GP notes, spreadsheets and presentations add their own headaches.
29athrowaway 6y ago
I disagree, we use Office 365 and experience frequent information loss. You edit a document, you get visual feedback that is "Saved", then reload it and all your changes are gone. It is also much slower compared to Google Docs, in terms of loading time and latency, and has an abundance of rendering glitches.

benrmatthews 6y ago

In the UK, Charity Digital Trust offers free licences for charities using Office 365: https://charitydigital.org.uk/products/microsoft-365-nonprofit-cloud-subscription https://charitydigital.org.uk/products/microsoft-365-nonprof...

rz2k 6y ago
For nonprofits in other countries it is worth looking at the TechSoup Global Network which will point you to different countries' equivalent of the charity digital exchange. https://www.techsoup.global/ https://www.techsoup.global/
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  I have a pro bono client that went through TechSoup. TS was generally very helpful and knew the MS product line, and so on. They added value.
adwww 6y ago
Why do you have to purchase through some random other charity, instead of just buying direct from microsoft.com?
- turnerc 6y ago
  Microsoft partners with TechSoup to validate charity status, this is their UK affiliate
  - adwww 6y ago
    Classic Microsoft then - complicated vendor relationships instead of just looking up your details on the charity commission register...

bachmeier 6y ago

I want to address this, since it's not the first time I've seen it. > Seriously, just use Office 365. Otherwise you'll forever be dealing with a constant low grade stream of interoperability glitches. The obvious answer is that they're already using an alternative to MS Office if they're using Google, and the reason for the migration is not interoperability issues. Importantly, however, Office 365 is also not a usable alternative if you need perfect interoperability with MS Office files. Trust me on this. I've had an administrative position for the last couple years. Suddenly I went from rarely having to deal with MS Office files to a steady stream of them. No big deal, I thought, since my employer uses Office 365. It's literally a joke to think you can share files with users of the desktop version of MS Office. Many, many times a message has popped up telling me I need to open the file in the desktop version if I want to edit. (And I don't think it supports the older Office files at all.) I mentioned that to the secretary and she just laughed and said you can't do collaborative work with the online version when everyone else uses the desktop version.

hyperrail 6y ago
An opposing anecdote: While using the Office web apps, I have rarely seen the "you need to open this file in the Windows desktop version of XYZ to edit the file" message in the last year and a half at Microsoft, a company that intensely uses Microsoft 365. In every case that I can recall, this message showed up in one of 2 cases: 1. Macro-enabled files - there is no VBA or .NET programmability for the web version. 2. Files protected with M365/Azure information protection (DRM/IRM). I don't think either of these scenarios are likely to occur in a charity/nonprofit, which was the original post's concern. As for me personally, I hardly ever wanted to edit files in either category intentionally - the macro-enabled files are old archival docs and the DRMed docs are announcements from executives. > And I don't think it supports the older Office files at all. True. M365 can convert .abc Office files to the .abcx format, save the converted copy, then open it for viewing and editing. That all happens in 1 step but is not the same as supporting the old formats to begin with. > I mentioned that to the secretary and she just laughed and said you can't do collaborative work with the online version when everyone else uses the desktop version. Ironically, I find that to the extent this is true, that's because the desktop version has fewer features. Make a comment on a Word doc? If you did it in the web version, your collaborator gets an email with the comment text, and if they're using the Outlook web or Windows desktop versions, they can even reply to the comment from within the email preview without having to click Reply or open a link to the doc. But if you did it in the desktop version, all your collaborator gets is "Comment previews are coming soon to the version of Word [you] used!" where "soon" has been soon for at least a year and a half.

lewisjoe 6y ago

Since this is the top comment, I want whoever stumbles here to be aware Office 365 isn't all that smooth either. There are things that Google's and Zoho's offerings do much better than Microsoft's. #1 This is 2020 and everybody's collaborating on a single doc with comments. But how do you point someone to a comment with a link? In Office 365, you can't. #2 Until recently office 365 didn't even have a grammar checker / proofing assistant. #3 You've worked on a document and intend to quickly send a pdf over to an email? You download the file, convert to pdf and email it. Even a simple "Send this file as an email attachment" isn't available in their editors. #4 Talking about file-format compatibility, like someone else has pointed out there's no guarantee that documents created in the online version is compatible with their desktop editors. Too bad. #5 In version history, how can you compare two versions of the same file? Well, you can't. Remember for Google and Zoho, cloud based document editors was their target, right from idea to finished product. For Microsoft, it was an afterthought. And it shows.

maxsilver 6y ago
> #1 This is 2020 and everybody's collaborating on a single doc with comments. But how do you point someone to a comment with a link? In Office 365, you can't. Counterpoint: This is not a bug, it's the best feature of Office 365. This is a bit of a rant, but the worst thing about Google Docs is how it encourages this terrible working pattern, where everyone wants to edit the same exact document at the same time like some kind of cursed nightmare Etherpad, without any way to reasonably handle merge conflicts, and with comments on comments on markup for lines. And every keystroke you press is logged indefinitely so you can't type anything out without everyone watching over your shoulder. Just a personal opinion, but as a paying Office 365 subscriber, Office 365 is at it's best when it fundamentally rejects Google's workflows and offers it's own. Besides, if what you really want is Google Doc stuff, you can already buy that from Google today anyway.
- ljm 6y ago
  The UI of it is what bugs me, as the comment boxes slide up and down the page while people are typing, so you have this annoying widget flying around and when you do want to reply to it, you've got to scroll around to try and find the thing again. A comment/request suggestion feature sounds like a good one, but I think the way Google did it is far from ideal.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

oarsinsync 6y ago

If the OP insists on not going down the O365 route (which will probably come with the same lack of guaranteed storage in the UK, which I believe is Brexit related as Google migrated my data out of the EU this year as well), the best recommendations I've seen as far as interop support actually goes is OnlyOffice combined with NextCloud. I haven't used it myself, but a number of people on this forum have advised that it's got significantly better compatibility with MS Office than any of the other contenders. This may have been in word processing only, however, and as the GP notes, spreadsheets and presentations add their own headaches.

29athrowaway 6y ago

I disagree, we use Office 365 and experience frequent information loss. You edit a document, you get visual feedback that is "Saved", then reload it and all your changes are gone. It is also much slower compared to Google Docs, in terms of loading time and latency, and has an abundance of rendering glitches.