George Hatch
Elite Member
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2002
- Professional Status
- Certified General Appraiser
- State
- California
I've been using Libre Office for years. It doesn't do everything MS Office does so you will have to make some adjustments but it's stable and isn't a resource hog. I suppose it depends on what you're trying to do with it.
I use Calc (excel) all the time. And it will readily read and write and save to a xls or convert to their own ods file but if doing the latter you might have to go back to the file and make some adjustments to the text or number or margin formatting to get it back to looking like the original Excel format.
They issue regular updates but I have never updated since the initial install - no need to, for how I use it.
I should mention that I do all my form reports in Calc. I haven't spent even a dollar on any of the report writing software I use for the last 10 years at least. Then again, I don't upload into the data portals either so that won't be an option for most appraisers.
If you ever wanted to build your own appraisal report "form" you can do it in a spreadsheet program. Then you control everything about it, as flexible and adjustable on the fly as any word processing narrative-type document. All you're doing is borders, merging cells into text fields and pagination. I use 7pt for the "form" descriptions and 10pt for my writing.
I use Calc (excel) all the time. And it will readily read and write and save to a xls or convert to their own ods file but if doing the latter you might have to go back to the file and make some adjustments to the text or number or margin formatting to get it back to looking like the original Excel format.
They issue regular updates but I have never updated since the initial install - no need to, for how I use it.
I should mention that I do all my form reports in Calc. I haven't spent even a dollar on any of the report writing software I use for the last 10 years at least. Then again, I don't upload into the data portals either so that won't be an option for most appraisers.
If you ever wanted to build your own appraisal report "form" you can do it in a spreadsheet program. Then you control everything about it, as flexible and adjustable on the fly as any word processing narrative-type document. All you're doing is borders, merging cells into text fields and pagination. I use 7pt for the "form" descriptions and 10pt for my writing.
Attachments
Last edited:
