It seems that my copy of office is not quite as legal as it could be. I assume my best bet is to get a version of OpenOffice any recommendations?

what do you use office for?
openoffice doesn’t mix brilliantly with highly formatted documents or (especially) powerpoint slidesets IM(bitter)E

It’s fine for doing you own stuff for your own use but a PITA if you then take to /bring from Office

“They” say that libreoffice has a better ongoing development, I think. We had openoffice thrust upon us at work and, lo, it was annoying. Most people have reverted to Office if they’re able to make a good enough case for it

LibreOffice

Works for me and it looks pretty and it’s free. You could sign up for a free college course that involves some type of computer/note taking and get a free copy of MS Office to download.

It is just for basic office and Excel use

IIRC OpenOffice was dropped by Sun\Oracle and development taken over by the Apache Foundation who named their fork to LibreOffice. so LibreOffice for future enhancements
I’m using it but it’s for own stuff and odd bits of work Excel. It works well enough, the only issue I’ve had is the built in equation editor is pretty poor and has rewritten a lot of my maths after upgrades. I’m now using the Texmaths interface to the MikTex engine which is working well but you can only edit equations in LibreOffice format, not MS-Word .docs. Only relevant if you’re doing maths though, everyting else is fine.

It is just for basic office and Excel use

Why not just use the free cloud offerings from Google or MS?

Another vote for Libre Office. Just as good as word for my needs

Don’t use it collaboratively on a document where other people are using Word. It’ll ***k you up real bad.

Don’t use it collaboratively on a document where other people are using Word. It’ll ***k you up real bad.

As long as they save the document in the same format there is no problem

Abi word is a good word alternative.

Abiword is like using Word 2.0. Libreoffice is certainly under a lot more actively development than OpenOffice these days.

As long as they save the document in the same format there is no problem

Yes there is. Caused serious issues last project, had to recreate the entire 120 page thing in MS Word.

Office 365. For 100€/yr you get 1TB of cloud space (which is alone a competitively priced way of keeping a cloud copy of stuff you don’t want to keep only on spinning rust in your living room and 5 installs of Office 365 for friends/family

I must be doing something right then 😆

Long shot for the OP, but you may be able to buy Microsoft Office for £9.95 through Microsoft’s ‘home use program’, if your employer qualifies (i.e. has a lot of MS licences I think).
Linky

Why not just use the free cloud offerings from Google or MS?

Indeed this or Apple

Maybe because Google own your stuff?

LibreOffice = more actively developed, best for home use.
OpenOffice = less featured but has a support option, best for work use if support is required.

if your employer qualifies (i.e. has a lot of MS licences I think).

Your employer has to subscribe / opt in to the programme for it to be available.