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A comment on Government Open Source Office deal set to provide major savings. Parent comment

Re:Government Open Source Office deal set to provide major s... by chris_wot on Tuesday October 20, 2015 @10:30AM (#10419351)
That's quite cool - didn't really know about that!

The only thing is that the reason VBA is so widely used is because it's built in to every single version of Excel (except Excel 2008 on OS X), which is why it's ubiquitous. Are Power BI and PowerView things that can be used within Excel without using a server? Are there additional licensing costs?

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Re:Government Open Source Office deal set to provide major s... by greggyb on Tuesday October 20, 2015 @10:44AM (#10419459)
Power BI is a series of free add-ins for Excel starting in 2010. Depending on your year and version they are either included or are downloadable. They are available in the standalone products and Pro Plus. Additionally there is a standalone, free program Power BI Desktop Pro which includes all the pieces without a dependency on Excel at all.

The desktop and mobile apps are completely free and the desktop pieces can be used without a server. The web portal is cloud-hosted and freemium to anyone with a corporate email address and the mobile apps require at least the free web portal.

Feel free to email me if you're curious about more details. Gregory.Baldini at gmail dot com.

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Re:Government Open Source Office deal set to provide major s... by chris_wot on Tuesday October 20, 2015 @10:50AM (#10419512)
Oh! I think I will tomorrow - I just finished a stint developing some Qlikview reports so I'm interested in other BI solutions.
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