I Need “Office”, What Should I Get? Pros vs Cons, You Decide

Rohne, you have hit the nail on the head as this is exactly what I was stumbling over.  I do use Libre Office but the only way I can get the columns to continue from this point forward, seems to be clicking on First Page every time and this is what annoys my publisher.  I have tried other settings in the menu but they all seem either inappropriate or turns the entire manuscript into columns, retroactively from first page to last.

As for the variations of what I can get, this I had also taken up with my publisher as there were so many options to choose from and I didn't know what difference there was between any of them.

Author yes.  Successful no. I am lucky if I sell a book a month (joke book best seller but that is only three a month which as my publisher points out is three more than some of his authors, on top of which education publishing is difficult to break into as one writer in the field, turned self-publisher revealed to me in a personal communication and this is what I need the column software for).

Thanks for the link and everything else as it was precisely what I needed to hear (and already thought mostly anyway).

I just purchased MS 365 Home...the Mac version.  What a mistake. I purchased to make sure I had the skills relevant to find an office job.  First the "Mac version" is so different from the tutorials that I find it difficult to believe I will be competent for any testing required.  I can't tell you how frustrating it is to realize my purpose for buying was not met by Microsoft. 

This is a brilliant article and has so many different routes to enable me to change what I have.   

I really only need Word and Excel so I am frantically reading through the options as I have to decide by the end of this month. Changing will also remove another problem - my outlook.com is very flaky since I bought an annual subscription to Office 365 Home Premium and various experts have said I should have used the outlook in my new Office package and discontinued what I was using.

What I'd like to know now is if I change my package, what will happen to all my documents, files etc? Should I copy them all now and save to a USB stick so that I can transfer them to the new package later? Or will they automatically be transferred if I set up my new package before my old one lapses?

Edited at 06:20 to tidy up

Since it appears you want/need 2 or 3 programs the stand alone licenses do not make sense for you. You should go with one of the Office bundles.

If you need outlook, then you want an Office 365 pay-forever subscription or Office 2016 Home and Business one-time payment.

<edit 2020 04 05: there is no such thing as a "pay-forever 365 subscription">

If your files are stored on your computer, they belong to you nothing happens to them. 

If they are in a 365 Education OneDrive, then yes you have to move them to some place you control, such as your personal free 5GB onedrive space, or a flash drive.

Nothing happens to the file structure. That is standard Office file format. They can be read/edited by any program that understands the format, even non-ms programs.

Other than 365 Education, 365 subscriptions do not die or lock up immediately at the end of the subscription. There is a grace period. Yes, you should move your files from the onedrive immediately, but you can continue using the old subscription for some time, potentially up to 3 months, before it degrades to read only functionality.

Thanks for this. An update - I've uninstalled Home 365 from my other laptop, the back-up one. I won't be doing many documents/spreadsheets on it so in its place I've installed one of the Libre products, Office 5.3.

The Word and Excel products I have on this laptop have far too many features that I will never use so I'm still urgently checking out your suggestions.

Just one final question - would you please point me to the MS article showing their timetable for stopping support for the range of products***? (I had it saved in my Favourites folder but lost it when I had to do a Clean Install two months ago.) 

Edited at 16:46 to add *** or is it just the range of Windows products that is in that  timetable? Will their standalone Word & Excel products always be updated, (although I understand that they will be improved by newer versions.)

Here is MS's "LifeCycle" page. Search for your application

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle

I cannot access your onedrive link. I get page error 

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Suggestions? I need to  get office products for 2 home users on 2 devices. Right now 1 WIN 10 laptop is fully licensed Microsoft office 365 pro plus. The other laptop old WIN 7 had a school supplied office that my now retired wifes logon is now defunct.