SoftMaker.com

I am mainly interested in PlanMaker, and it is fast, has good adjustable toolbar and enlargement of buttons. The paste format is wonderful and it does not take an enormous amount of space on a usb.

But I am disappointed about the font in formula bar, which is too small for me to see comfortably. Also the sheet names are very small.

Then the issue of number and date formats. Our government insists on brackets, rather than a minus sign for taxes etc. and this program changes all my brackets to minus which caused an enormous amount of work. The date format the Canadian government uses is 2010-10-05, which is not available either. One can change that but it should not be necessary at the price you pay for this office.

Cannot use it for now, because sharing my files wiht others, I would lose too many friends when messing up their number and date format.

So it is not right to advertise this as so Excel compatible.

Do others have these concerns?

I have being using portable SoftMaker since 2006 version.
I have uninstalled the MSOffice and return its license to our systems year ago.
Since then nobody noticed that I prepare DOCs and XLSs by means of the alternative office package.

The Excel is giant. It is said that there is functionality to launch a cruise missile somewhere in it.

But for our tasks, the TextMaker and the PlanMaker are Word and Excel compatible.

I alter the budget document for our development department regularly.
I also do project planning in the PlanMaker.
The TextMaker prepares neat specifications.

I enjoy using it.
Thanks to all who involved into the program production.

Yes, there are: http://www.softmaker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=29928#p29928

As you may see from this thread, the number format issue was brought to SoftMaker's attention quite recently, and they are working on it. Hopefully it won't be too long before it is implemented.

As for the date issue, the format you need has already been added in the current developer version, so we can expect it to show up in the near future.