Comment by leoedin
3 days ago
The web versions of Office tools are pretty good these days. There’s a few missing features, but you can get by mostly. I don’t think my company even gives licenses for desktop office by default any more.
3 days ago
The web versions of Office tools are pretty good these days. There’s a few missing features, but you can get by mostly. I don’t think my company even gives licenses for desktop office by default any more.
I get why you'd say the web versions are "pretty good" for most people, and I agree they've improved, but I think that's only true if you're doing basic stuff. The moment you hit a complex corporate or academic document, the web version of Office falls apart. It's materially worse than even LibreOffice when you consider a power user's reality.
The real killer is Excel. The web version has zero support for crucial tools like Power Query or Power Pivot, which are essential for any modern data analysis. You can't run, edit, or even create serious VBA/Macros, and advanced data validation and conditional formatting are stripped down to the bone.
For Word, if you're in law or academia, forget it. Features like Table of Authorities or Table of Figures are either completely missing or so simplified they are useless. Even the ability to handle standard APA or MLA citation styles is heavily cut down compared to the desktop app.
And for PowerPoint? You lose access to serious third party add-ins, and the granular control over animations and timers that professionals need just isn't there.
So, while the web version might be fine for a quick edit of a simple file, if you need to reliably work with a complex document from a Windows-based company, the compatibility issues and missing features will force you into a desktop app eventually. If you're going to be forced into a desktop experience anyway, you might as well bite the bullet and go LibreOffice for its feature completeness on Linux/FreeBSD.
It's a stronger bet than relying on Microsoft's cut-down web versions.