Comment by edg5000

3 days ago

Can you provide some details on the reasons for needing MS Offfice? I'm genuinely curious. What does LibreOffice do differently that makes it a problem for you to use? Personally my only complaint is the performance of LO, which could be better.

8 comments

edg5000

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OJFord  3 days ago

I'm not GP but I do know it's rare to open an existing .docx in LibreOffice and have it look right; who knows what it looks like in Word after I've edited and saved it. It's fine creating new documents, and Excel/Calc is better than Word (inherent in being more structured I suppose), but it's not a drop-in replacement. I've used web Office365 when necessary though, not Windows.

  • sombragris  3 days ago

    > I do know it's rare to open an existing .docx in LibreOffice and have it look right; who knows what it looks like in Word after I've edited and saved it.

    This is not true except as hyperbole. Most docx open and let themselves edit quite well in LibreOffice Writer, and they look right.

    However, you still have a point. There are always some cases when the compatibility is not good, and the only way to use said docx files would be in MS Word.

sokoloff  3 days ago

For me, some complex Excel usage was not replicable in either Sheets or LibreOffice.

  • thewebguyd  2 days ago

    Excel I'd argue is the primary reason for most in the business world.

    What LibreOffice misses, and sheets to a lesser extent, is that Excel isn't just a spreadsheet app. It's a general-purpose programming environment for non-devs (although, at a certain point, you could argue they are effectively programming even if they don't see it that way).

    Yeah, there are better solutions. At a certain level of complexity, you probably shouldn't be using Excel and should switch to Python+some SQL database, but there's something to be said about the visual environment Excel provides.

    Excel is Microsoft's killer app

    • fragmede  2 days ago

      > It's a general-purpose programming environment for non-devs

      Google sheets's programmability is way better (than the last time I used) Excel, with direct support for python, which Gemini can write just fine. It's a bit fiddly in places, I'll admit, but Google sheets is definitely a programming environment.