this post was submitted on 09 May 2025

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LibreOffice is pretty damn good (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Today I did my first advanced spreadsheet on LibreOffice after switching to Linux, and it handled itself pretty well. I had to search for some features on the web at first, but after I got it down, I felt comfortable using it. Also, LibreOffice's default menu layout is not pretty, but I can find all of the functions with just a click, unlike MS Office's ribbon menu where I had to click around to find what I was looking for. Sorry for bad English.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (11 children)

I am so close to loving libreoffice but trackpad gesture scrolling is broken and it's kind of not optional on a laptop. With a mouse, I am a big fan.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I do a lot of work with CSV files and LibreCalc is so much better for them. You can actually tell it how to delimit the file and to put quotations around each field.

Some programs actually advise against using excel if you're going to work on a CSV to upload into the program, which is funny considering it's meant to be the industry standard.

P. S. For anyone that would like to use LibreOffice at work, download portableapps and get it from there. It's so portable it can get around IT administration requirements

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago (11 children)

On behalf of cyber and IT, just ask IT to install the thing, please. They can't really say no to a free app and bypassing restrictions ends badly for everyone. I had a user do that with video editing software... seriously, what could go wrong? Ransomware. Literally ransomware. Lucky for antivirus it stopped it but yeah, please work with IT.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Almost anytime i want to do something a bit more interesting in Excel i have to look for a solution on the web too. And i am considered one of the better Excel users in my working environment.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I recommend giving OnlyOffice a try too. Way better UX/UI than Libre. Compatible with MS Office. No cost.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

And coming fresh from a Russian Company with huge russian Government and Army Contracts

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Hm, TIL. I thought they were from the Baltics. For what it’s worth, as far as I can tell the desktop apps never tried to “phone home” from my machine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

"Headquartered" in Latvia. But really it's Russian.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I thought the main devs were Latvian 🤔

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

it's not like OnlyOffice is controlled by Putin or something lol

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ribbon bar shit, personally I hate the MS ribbon bar. So for me the LO interface is way better. Just depends on what you like and what you learned and know well.

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[+] [email protected] -18 points 1 day ago (10 children)

Honest question: who would use a non-collaborative standalone spreadsheet in 2025? I don't get it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Me, i hate "collaborative" internet connected spying stuff

While libreoffice seems to me like a gazillion features held together by duct tape, it does what I need it to do

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Not sure why you got downvoted, it is a fair question. Real time multiuser editing is a powerful feature. That said it is really only needed a small fraction of the time for specific types of collaboration. Also, it can cause problems as well. Libreoffice Calc meets most of my home spreadsheet needs: calculating mortgage rates and future value of investments and such.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You can absolutely collaborate with Collabora Office

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Yes, true.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I don't need to share everything, everytime. Do you ?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Context is important:

"in August 2023, OnlyOffice announced a restructuring, placing Ascensio System SIA under the ownership of a British company, which is in turn owned by a Singapore-based holding company"

Its also open source and can be audited still.

I might uninstall because of this though as didnt even know.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (3 children)

My single personal spreadsheet is (uh) a CSV that I edit with vim. I don't want to have to fire up a monstrous GUI app just to view a table. But sure, count me as eccentric in this way.

Most of the spreadsheets I deal with are for work. For what I consider obvious reasons, they've been cloud-hosted for literally decades now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah, so you do use them, so you get it. Just most people use spreadsheets cause they know it and seem simple to them ! For me, I try to not use online spreadsheets for personal financial stuff. I only use online spreadsheets if the project has meaning in being shared. I quite like grist for this, really handful tool

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Your initial response got peoples' backs up because of its dismissive tone and (it seemed to me, as you hadn't provided context) apparent advocacy for web-based tools like O365 or GSheets.

Many office application users wouldn't consider vim as an "office application", as they have their word processing app, their spreadsheet app, their email app, their chat app, their file explorer/manager, maybe something other than Notepad as a text editor, etc, and don't really know much beyond some of what each of them can do.

The fact that vim (or Emacs or vim/nvim with plugins, or LazyVim or Doom Emacs) can do all of those things would blow many minds.

But the setup effort and learning curve is still there, and also requires that they have sufficient permissions/policy to be able to install things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Your initial response got peoples’ backs up because of its dismissive tone and (it seemed to me, as you hadn’t provided context) apparent advocacy for web-based tools like O365 or GSheets.

The pernicious side of social media in microcosm. To say "it's not collaborative" is somehow understood as shilling for big tech. Always the worst possible interpretation of every remark.

Agreed as to vim.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There is a difference between "cloud-hosting" (= storing your documents on other people's computers) and "collaborative editing" (= working on the same file at the same time).

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes yes. The issue here being that in the real world nobody much is doing the latter. But we're getting off topic, LibreOffice is neither.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

LibreOffice can perfectly work with files stored on other people's computers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, in theory, although tricky to set up. What it cannot do, at least not without fiddly modules, and even then nowhere near as well as the cloud competition, is any kind of collaborative document editing. Which is where the world is at today.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You said "in the real world nobody much is doing the latter".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Indeed, confusing terminology. I consider that collaborative document editing is the activity, cloud hosting vs P2P is the technical implementation.

Like it or not, nobody much is doing the latter because it's much harder to set up and the available cloud solutions provide a much (much) better user experience. I don't say this a better situation but it's the way things are.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago

Honest answer: People who would create spreadsheets for themselves.

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[+] [email protected] -6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

However, in direct comparison with SoftMaker Office (which, admittedly, is not free software), LibreOffice is inconsistent, sluggish, unstable and less compatible with Microsoft formats.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

For me MS Office aren't compatible with LibreOffice is because MS fault not LibreOffice

[+] [email protected] -21 points 1 day ago (3 children)

How is it Microsoft's fault that the LibreOffice team fails to properly support its formats? Others can do it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

The formats are "quasi-open". There's still a lot of proprietary stuff in them. Or undocumented or poorly documented things. MS didn't really want it to be an open standard.

Being compatible with them requires a lot of work to reverse engineer the formats. Some companies make licensing deals with ms to get access to better docs but must keep their code closed. Something libreoffice can't do.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

MS supplied LO translator in MS Office is not very good. That is their issue. MS is not even that compatible betwen versions of their own software.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's MS make their format to not compatible with other office software (because monopoly)

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Then why can SoftMaker support it well and LibreOffice can't?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

I don't use SM but probably because MS document format is their priority while LO's priority is open document format

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Except for MS format compatiblity, not my experience, Not sure where MS format compatibility stands now, but that has histically been the biggest issue.

Keep on mind that MS supplied LibreOffice translator is not great either so they have issues too. MS really does not plan on being compatible even between versions of their own software.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

There are still a few issues left to fix in my experience.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wrong info, the Microsoft format is less compatible with everything else.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Formats aren't compatible. Parsers are.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There is Office software that can handle Microsoft formats better than other Office software. Still, Microsoft's file formats are open.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

That's a sham. Only basic stuff is open standard, the rest is proprietary extensions. Such a format can't usually be standardized; there's an entire Wikipedia article about MS' shenanigans to make it happen. But MS doesn't even keep to that ambiguous 600-pages standard anymore. Here's fsfe' stance to it, calling it a pseudo-standard.

Which results in basic formatting having to be reverse-engineered. Better use Open Document Format.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

But MS doesn’t even keep to that standard anymore.

To be fair, LibreOffice had (don't know if it still has!) problems rendering OpenOffice .odt files in the past.

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