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IMO, the best version of Office is Office 2010. According to me, it is the version that looks the best and has the most tools for being productive. Office 2007 closely follows 2K10. It also looks beautiful but has less number of useful features that I use frequently.
Among earlier versions, Office 2000 and 2003 are the best as they have a simple toolbar-style interface and are easy to use with a number of useful tools, still, they lose to Office 2007 and 2010. Later versions from 2013 onwards are not on my list as they are ugly, slow (the slowest being 2016) and bloated. 2013 is somewhat tolerable, but nowhere near to even Office 2000.
EDIT on 16 June 2021: I tried replacing 2010 SP2 with 2007 and I honestly feel that 2007 offers the same speed, for a smaller disk footprint but while cutting out on some features, which are useful but not the ones I cannot live without. The real best version is Office 2010 TP (Build 4006).

Office 2010, I like the design, speed, and design the most.

Office 2000 or XP, for me. No fancy looks, no gradients, just menus, toolbars and virtual paper. I just wish it wasnt so darn hard to get all the toolbar items situated the way I like. But to be fair, it is a thing one only needs to do once.

I tend to use whatever Office version corresponds to the Windows version, so 2007 is installed on my system. The most jarring thing about it however is the lack of Ribbon UI in Publisher, which is an application I never considered 'deprecated' however it seems like MS did since around this point onwards.

My favourite version? Probably 2000 or 2002, if I'm right in saying they're virtually identical - though I've only touched the latter myself.

My favorite version is Office 2000, but on a Windows Vista - 10 system I would never want to use it, because it just doesn´t fit in.

XP Luna wrote: *

01 Feb 2021, 18:05

My favorite version is Office 2000, but on a Windows Vista - 10 system I would never want to use it, because it just doesn´t fit in.

Heh, I think i said something like that previously.
Any reason why 2000 over 2002? I'm assuming the activation is part of the reason (which a very well known VLK can circumvent), since there isn't much in the way of new features, but it was the last one to support the 9x line, so...

Compa wrote: *

09 Feb 2021, 12:21

XP Luna wrote: *

01 Feb 2021, 18:05

My favorite version is Office 2000, but on a Windows Vista - 10 system I would never want to use it, because it just doesn´t fit in.

Any reason why 2000 over 2002? I'm assuming the activation is part of the reason (which a very well known VLK can circumvent), since there isn't much in the way of new features, but it was the last one to support the 9x line, so...

Not really, I just never owned 2002. And I´m not sure what you want to say... Activation? I have a key for Office 2000 which can be used as often as I want so, yes, kind of...

Office 2000 doesn't require activation. 2002 does aside from VLKs and one specific key (almost as famous as 'FCKGW') is usually used as MS never imposed blocking keys after specific updates on volume licence keys for 2002, unlike they did with most of the keys floating around for 2003.

Office 2000 and XP (2002) is nearly the same thing, other than 95 support, activation and the assistant being disabled by default. So, I'd just go with 2000 due to the lack of activation and the 95 support.

Compa wrote: *

09 Feb 2021, 13:38

Office 2000 doesn't require activation.

It does. I always have to activate it.

Compa wrote: *

09 Feb 2021, 13:38

2002 does aside from VLKs and one specific key (almost as famous as 'FCKGW') is usually used as MS never imposed blocking keys after specific updates on volume licence keys for 2002, unlike they did with most of the keys floating around for 2003.

Okay, so it´s easy to activate Office 2002, but is there any reason to upgrade to Office 2002 on Windows XP?

Entering a product key !== activating the product. One is an online/telephonic form of DRM, the other is completely internal and only used during setup.

XP Luna wrote: *

09 Feb 2021, 13:43

Compa wrote: *

09 Feb 2021, 13:38

Office 2000 doesn't require activation.

It does. I always have to activate it.

Compa wrote: *

09 Feb 2021, 13:38

2002 does aside from VLKs and one specific key (almost as famous as 'FCKGW') is usually used as MS never imposed blocking keys after specific updates on volume licence keys for 2002, unlike they did with most of the keys floating around for 2003.

Okay, so it´s easy to activate Office 2002, but is there any reason to upgrade to Office 2002 on Windows XP?

If you're on Office 2000, there's absolutely no need to upgrade to Office XP/2002. Upgrading to 2003 may make more sense.

2003 looks insanely pretty when using it in combination with XP/2003. Not sure why 2002 even exists in any case,probably some kind of interim release of sorts as opposed to a real 'full release'. I do prefer 2002 and previous's photo editor, though.

Compa wrote: *

09 Feb 2021, 14:02

2003 looks insanely pretty when using it in combination with XP/2003. Not sure why 2002 even exists in any case,probably some kind of interim release of sorts as opposed to a real 'full release'. I do prefer 2002 and previous's photo editor, though.

To be honest: I don´t like the Office 2003 UI that much because it just doesn´t feel right on Windows XP...

It still feels better than looking at Windows 9x-era icons on Windows XP, that's for certain.
Always bugged me that XP had icons from 2K in certain areas, even when I was really young. Vista has almost none of that issue.

Compa wrote: *

09 Feb 2021, 14:10

It still feels better than looking at Windows 9x-era icons on Windows XP, that's for certain.
Always bugged me that XP had icons from 2K in certain areas, even when I was really young. Vista has almost none of that issue.

I dont agree.
But even Windows 10 has some XP designed windows in certain areas

I agree, office 2003 looks weird. Office 2000/XP much preferred.

Well duh. It depends on your OS.
Office 97 for 98SE and older
Office 2k for Win2000/WinME
Office 2003 for XP and Linux (WINE)
Office 2010 for Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10

Overall? Office 2010. Looks amazing and still works with yahoo mail / aol mail / gmail (sorted best - worst). Only disadvantage? slower as compared to previous versions. Oh and Office 2010 is easy to pirate

Yahoo/AOL are the same company now (Oath, a subsidiary of Verizon if I'm not mistaken), so they're the same - similarly to how mail.com and GMX are effectively the same thing under different names, due to being owned by United Internet. (The former, oddly enough, doesn't have POP3/IMAP support, while the latter does.) Can certainly agree Gmail is aggravating to use and seemingly sends out an absurd number of promotional emails to the point it puts me off using it for anything half-serious whatsoever, as it's just going to get drowned in other crap.

I prefer the Office 2007 UI on Vista over 2010's personally but my main issue with it is how Publisher sticks out like a sore thumb. It's kinda clear around that point that they were attempting to phase that particular product out given it was virtually identical to the version included with the 2003 suite.

Also, good call for mentioning WINE. Given how the font-rendering is messy in 2007 from what I recall reading up, and how flaky Linux distros handle UI elements in general from time to time, I'm somewhat unsurprised you mentioned 2003. It would seem the most fitting alongside any other natively-built application.

omega wrote: *

12 Feb 2021, 05:56

Only disadvantage? slower as compared to previous versions. Oh and Office 2010 is easy to pirate

2010 has always been faster compared to earlier or later versions (2003 and 2007 closely follow) for me on everything except for Windoze 10 (which is horrendously slow itself while also making other apps sluggish).

IMO 2010. Ribbon, works great with Vista and 7 (albeit not as much with 8.1 and 10 when unmodded). There's only like one or two things in later versions that I like that I think could be ported over.
2007's UI is great too, if not better than 2010s. Works great with Vista and 7.

If you're still running XP, then for fitting-in icons, use 2003 otherwise use 2010.

Odly XP x64 won't let you install Office 2010, even the x86 variant if I'm not mistaken. 2007's UI is nicer but lacks polish in certain places. glares at Publisher

@Compa But Office 2010 is compatible with XP!?

openrain502r wrote: *

16 Feb 2021, 10:11

IMO 2010. Ribbon, works great with Vista and 7 (albeit not as much with 8.1 and 10 when unmodded).

I used Office 2010 a while on Windows 10 and it worked flawlessly.

XP Luna wrote: *

16 Feb 2021, 18:02

@Compa But Office 2010 is compatible with XP!?

x86 version only. For some reason installation is blocked on Server 2003/x64 Edition of XP, presumably because they didn't care of supporting that version of Windows with the native x64 Office version.

That´s weird... But probably there´s a workaround. But isn´t it possible to install the 32 bit version of Office on XP x64?

sigh

I just said it wasn't officially supported. Maybe with appverifier, but idk.

Application Verifier is an offshoot of Windows compatibility shims. You can use compat mode on XP x64 to install Office 2010 x86 if setup.exe is set to "Windows XP". The method for 2010 x64 requires setting appverifier to Vista/7.

There's actually one component of 2010 x64 that doesn't work on XP x64. It's one of the obscure ones like Groove or something.

XP Luna wrote: *

16 Feb 2021, 18:02

@Compa But Office 2010 is compatible with XP!?

openrain502r wrote: *

16 Feb 2021, 10:11

IMO 2010. Ribbon, works great with Vista and 7 (albeit not as much with 8.1 and 10 when unmodded).

I used Office 2010 a while on Windows 10 and it worked flawlessly.

Yeah, Office 2010 is compatible with XP. SP3 only, however. 2007 needs SP2 though as far as I know.
And by "not as much with 8.1 and 10" I meant that it looks out of place, especially 2007. Should've clarified that.

openrain502r wrote: *

28 Feb 2021, 09:46

Should've clarified that.

Yeah, probably, but in my opinion it looks very good in Win 10, better than 2013 and newer.

Come back with that opinion when you enable title bar colouring in Windows 8.x and above. It looks ugly as hell.