Lucky for me, there's a very active Linux group in St Louis. I've been on their message server for years but haven't made enough effort to attend meetings.
I use "Classic Shell" to avoid the BS Windows Desktop and find Office 2003 does everything I need to do AND and I can find the command I need without hunting for it. Regretfully, I installed Office 2016 and can't run the older version of Outlook. The 2003 version of Word, Excel and PowerPoint work great even with the "x" extension files after installing the compatibility update.