Installing MS Office in Arch machine

JTjohnston · 2015-04-13 13:10:46

I have a laptop (and desktop) running Arch (can get the specifics if necessary) and I want** to install a version of MS Office on the laptop. Office 365 is freely available to me (through work). I saw on other threads that Microsoft had hinted that a linux version of office may be available in 2014... but I think that was just a joke on their part; I can find no information of an actual release. I also saw on the forums that Office 2010 seems to work reasonably well with wine; unfortunately I have no access (as far as I can tell) to a copy of Office 2010.

Is there any "nice" way to install MS Office (365?) on my arch machine? I have thought about a VM, but have never used/created one (and I assume I need a copy of windows to create such a thing). I appreciate any insights.

**I don't really "want" a copy of Office, but my employer has asked (told) me to install the copy.

Last edited by JTjohnston (2015-04-13 13:22:51)

runical · 2015-04-13 13:25:04

You have a few options:

Office 365 should be usable in a browser right? This should be the easiest option.
Install in a virtual machine. Virtualbox or Qemu are probably the easiest options there. Make sure you have some way of installing Windows, be it using a CD, ISO or something else. Note that Virtualbox can let the desktops integrate with each other, making it look like any program running in the VM is on the same desktop.
Use Wine to run Office "natively". This is probably the hardest option, depending on your version of office. See [1].

I'd probably create a virtual machine, as it will allow for more Windows only applications. Just make sure you have a copy of Windows you can install.

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mi … ffice_2007

Last edited by runical (2015-04-13 13:27:03)

JTjohnston · 2015-04-13 13:40:56

I think the VM is probably the best option. I'll just have to do some research and figure out how to set it up. My "organization" has free access to Office 365, but when I log into the portal it says "You can only install office on a PC or Mac." I assume there is some local plugin that requires that you use a PC or Mac?

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-04-13 13:43:02

For the VM option I would recommend using the Windows 10 "Technical Preview" as it is free (at the moment).
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/preview-iso

Just make sure you read the installation agreement -- it has an active key-logger feeding everything back to Redmond...

runical · 2015-04-13 14:00:57

JTjohnston wrote:

I think the VM is probably the best option. I'll just have to do some research and figure out how to set it up. My "organization" has free access to Office 365, but when I log into the portal it says "You can only install office on a PC or Mac." I assume there is some local plugin that requires that you use a PC or Mac?

I have no idea. I have never worked with office 365, but assumed that it was possible to use it in the browser since it was advertised as "use anywhere". It is entirely possible I misunderstood. But in this case, I would go with the VM for sure. However, I'd ask your IT department if they can fix you up with a Windows copy. I don't think that the company will be too thrilled if they knew you were using Windows 10-preview.

sajan · 2015-04-13 14:27:55

Is there a specific reason your employer is demanding you to use MS Office? Perhaps he isn't aware of Libreoffice's superb compaitibility? You can even set LO to save in MS Office formats by default.

JTjohnston · 2015-04-13 15:47:03

My employer users PowerPoint and we have a lot of "collaborative" presentations. I've tried using Libreoffice (I already have that on my machine) but it renders the PowerPoint slides my employer creates poorly. We are in a small research lab, so we can purchase software when needed, but prefer to avoid it whenever possible. I'm currently trying to install a very very minimal windows VM so that I can just use MS Office. I personally prefer LATEX/beamer for presentations (platform independent), but not everyone likes LATEX as much as I do (and good animations are usually hard if not impossible with beamer). I appreciate the help. Thanks for the comments.

runical · 2015-04-13 15:53:09

Well, if you really want to keep it native, you can try WPS office [1]. Its MS office compatibility is way better than that of Libre Office. Me and my sister have been using it as a MS Office replacement and as long as you keep the documents relatively simple, it is a really good replacement (proprietary and in beta alpha on Linux, but still).

Just try multiple solutions and go with the best one.

[1] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/wps-office/

Last edited by runical (2015-04-13 15:54:15)

jyotib652 · 2017-07-21 08:36:40

Install MSOffice 2007 or MSOffice 2010 Successfully on Arch Linux through Wine

1) First install all the packages for Wine

#sudo pacman -S wine winetricks wine_gecko wine-mono lib32-ncurses

2) Then install ttf-ms-fonts for microsoft fonts support

#sudo pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts

2) After that, Set up Wine Architecture and Wine Prefix as win32

#WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/wine32 winecfg

3) Then, install msxml3 for msoffice2007 and msxml3,msxml6 for msoffice 2010

#WINEPREFIX=~/wine32 winetricks msxml3

#WINEPREFIX=~/wine32 winetricks msxml6 (for msoffice2010)

4) Now, install samba package for winbind package as the lib32-libwbclient(winbind) package is discontinued in arch linux

#sudo pacman -S samba

5) Now, install the msoffice by running setup.exe file through wine.

#WINEPREFIX=~/wine32 wine /path/to/msoffice/folder/setup.exe

Example:

#WINEPREFIX=~/wine32 wine /home/fred_a/msoffice2010/MS\ Office\ 2010/MS\ Office\ 2010/setup.exe

Now, MSOffice is installed on your arch linux system.

Last edited by jyotib652 (2017-07-21 08:39:51)

WorMzy · 2017-07-21 09:48:22

Thanks for sharing, however please note that this is an old topic and there is already a page with the same information on it on the Arch wiki.

Closing.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-04-13 13:10:46

Installing MS Office in Arch machine

#2 2015-04-13 13:25:04

Re: Installing MS Office in Arch machine

#3 2015-04-13 13:40:56

Re: Installing MS Office in Arch machine

#4 2015-04-13 13:43:02

Re: Installing MS Office in Arch machine

#5 2015-04-13 14:00:57

Re: Installing MS Office in Arch machine

#6 2015-04-13 14:27:55

Re: Installing MS Office in Arch machine

#7 2015-04-13 15:47:03

Re: Installing MS Office in Arch machine

#8 2015-04-13 15:53:09

Re: Installing MS Office in Arch machine

#9 2017-07-21 08:36:40

Re: Installing MS Office in Arch machine

#10 2017-07-21 09:48:22

Re: Installing MS Office in Arch machine

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