Following a successful pilot project, the northern German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein has decided to move from Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office to Linux and LibreOffice (and other free and open source software) on the 30,000 PCs used in the local government. As reported on the homepage of the Minister-President: Independent, sustainable, secure: Schleswig-Holstein will […]
This makes me want to try LibreOffice again. Is it really close-enough to on-par? I tried OpenOffice and LibreOffice a few times through the years and always found weird hiccups, like filetype issues, files looking different between programs, weird UI choices, etc… I would love to have a legitimate replacement option.
No issues here. Have to use (mainly) excel at work, but use libre office calc at home, for years. Hate excel with all my heart. Mainly autocomplete and UI issues, but also issues when using more than one instance with excel. No problems with file exchange, p.e. with my tax person. Imho excel was THE leader but they enshittyfied it to the max.
Libreoffice is strongest when you’re using ODT format because it’s an open standard. It’s not at all their fault for docx incompatibilities because they change the format CONSTANTLY and of course their only documentation is internal.
Personally I haven’t had those issues though, only slight formatting differences when opening docx files, and half the time it’s because I didn’t have the font installed. You can change to the ribbon style if you really want but personally I prefer the older style, I find it’s easier to find what I want.
No issues as long as you switch the toolbar to use tabs or contextual groups instead of the insane button overload which is still the default for some reason.
If you need MS office compatibility, don’t use Libreoffice. If you just want to use the software for your own documents, Libreoffice is (imo) better* once you get used to it. If you need Basic Excel macros, Libreoffice won’t work unfortunately.
(*) the thing I hate about excel is that everything works “like magic” which is fine as long as it works. When something doesn’t work, you are screwed because you cannot explicitly tell Excel what to do. It wants to do its own magic instead of obeying your will.
I’ve been using libreoffice for several years, and when I have to cowork with someone, compatibility issues always happen. However, since last year, I’ve been experimenting transitioning to onlyoffice for a few academic works, and it has been so smooth. So far, I opened all documents people sent me without issues, and published some works, and no one involved in the process complained about anything. If you need compatibility with ms office, I suggest using onlyoffice. It’s also foss and can be used at most OSes, even on android.
Edit: I see that other people already suggested onlyoffice. I didn’t mean to sound like those pushy comments that appear on our inbox from people saying the same thing again and again.
This makes me want to try LibreOffice again. Is it really close-enough to on-par? I tried OpenOffice and LibreOffice a few times through the years and always found weird hiccups, like filetype issues, files looking different between programs, weird UI choices, etc… I would love to have a legitimate replacement option.
No issues here. Have to use (mainly) excel at work, but use libre office calc at home, for years. Hate excel with all my heart. Mainly autocomplete and UI issues, but also issues when using more than one instance with excel. No problems with file exchange, p.e. with my tax person. Imho excel was THE leader but they enshittyfied it to the max.
Libreoffice is strongest when you’re using ODT format because it’s an open standard. It’s not at all their fault for docx incompatibilities because they change the format CONSTANTLY and of course their only documentation is internal.
Personally I haven’t had those issues though, only slight formatting differences when opening docx files, and half the time it’s because I didn’t have the font installed. You can change to the ribbon style if you really want but personally I prefer the older style, I find it’s easier to find what I want.
This is a really good tip. I admit I never really experimented beyond .doc/.docx due purely to muscle memory. It makes sense that would cause issues.
No issues as long as you switch the toolbar to use tabs or contextual groups instead of the insane button overload which is still the default for some reason.
I use Word at work and OnlyOffice and it works perfectly fine for my needs.
I don’t see any reason to go back to any proprietary software at home 😇
If you need MS office compatibility, don’t use Libreoffice. If you just want to use the software for your own documents, Libreoffice is (imo) better* once you get used to it. If you need Basic Excel macros, Libreoffice won’t work unfortunately.
(*) the thing I hate about excel is that everything works “like magic” which is fine as long as it works. When something doesn’t work, you are screwed because you cannot explicitly tell Excel what to do. It wants to do its own magic instead of obeying your will.
I’ve been using libreoffice for several years, and when I have to cowork with someone, compatibility issues always happen. However, since last year, I’ve been experimenting transitioning to onlyoffice for a few academic works, and it has been so smooth. So far, I opened all documents people sent me without issues, and published some works, and no one involved in the process complained about anything. If you need compatibility with ms office, I suggest using onlyoffice. It’s also foss and can be used at most OSes, even on android.
Edit: I see that other people already suggested onlyoffice. I didn’t mean to sound like those pushy comments that appear on our inbox from people saying the same thing again and again.
OnlyOffice is good. Better compatibility with MS office and nicer UI than libreoffice.
I don’t like that it feels more like a webpage in a browser than real software.
Yeah, it does suck that they made it in Electron and performance is not great but it’s still pretty good imo.