[ShadowAce]

All have MS Office 2003 installed on them. When we’ve relocated, my Office 2003 program disks have been in my carry-on bag; can’t risk losing it.

Download and try out LibreOffice. Once you see that you can open and use all of your current docs with LibreOffice, you won't be so worried about MS Office.

[dayglored]

> Download and try out LibreOffice.

Good advice, with a caveat.

I've used that suite for decades, starting with StarOffice, OpenOffice, and most recently LibreOffice. It's improved tremendously over time, and compatibility is almost 100%.

Keyword: "Almost".

Standard, simple Word docs and Excel spreadsheets work fine. But I still find some more complex ones, that rely on advanced features of the recent Microsoft suites, are not 100% compatible. The problems arise when I get a document that was created in MS-Office, I work on it in LibreOffice, and then send it back to the original creator. They open it in MS-Office, and "It doesn't look right any more."

So I agree with ShadowAce, and I DO recommend LibreOffice. With the caveat that with regard to trading documents back and forth with Microsoft users, it's advisable to "Trust But Verify".

That said, Office 2003 (with the file conversion pack for .docx, etc.) is going to have a rough time with complex modern docs too. :-)