Generic "iWorks vs LibreOffice" post: What have your experiences been with the two?

[mikebjammin]

Title. I have been using Microsoft Office 2011 since I got my MacBook Pro in 2013. Recently I noticed that it is very slow and can be glitchy at times, which makes sense as it is a 9 year old software. As I only need office apps for very basic needs (e.g., proofreading documents from work, some PowerPoint presentations, etc.) I was looking into the free options available. I have been messing around with both iWorks and LibreOffice.

I want to like Pages more than LibreOffice, however, it seems like LibreOffice gets the formatting of MS Word documents spot on most of the time while Pages always seems to be a little off. I do like KeyNotes better than the "Power Point" on LibreOffice. At the end of the day I'll probably just end up using a mixture of the two.

I guess I was just curious as to what others think about the two office apps. I appreciate any replies!

 

[TiggrToo]

Title. I have been using Microsoft Office 2011 since I got my MacBook Pro in 2013. Recently I noticed that it is very slow and can be glitchy at times, which makes sense as it is a 9 year old software. As I only need office apps for very basic needs (e.g., proofreading documents from work, some PowerPoint presentations, etc.) I was looking into the free options available. I have been messing around with both iWorks and LibreOffice.

I want to like Pages more than LibreOffice, however, it seems like LibreOffice gets the formatting of MS Word documents spot on most of the time while Pages always seems to be a little off. I do like KeyNotes better than the "Power Point" on LibreOffice. At the end of the day I'll probably just end up using a mixture of the two.

I guess I was just curious as to what others think about the two office apps. I appreciate any replies!

I have access to Office on my work MacBook but use Pages, Numbers etc. whenever I can.

I did have Libre office, and I really tried hard to like it, but every time I'd fire it up I had had memories of Windows 95.

That said, I'd agree that it feels better than Apple's suite in terms of compatability.

 

[chscag]

If you need to maintain compatibility with MS Office documents that you mentioned above from work, only MS Office is 100% compatible. LibreOffice is bloatware in my opinion and Pages does not do well with MS Word documents. Keynote is better with Powerpoint docs but not 100%.

Take a look at SoftMaker Free Office which you can download from here.

FreeOffice: The best free alternative to Microsoft Office

FreeOffice, the best free alternative to Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) for Windows, Mac and Linux

www.freeoffice.com

 

[370zulu]

I have been subscribing to Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) since it was first offered. I have absolutely no love for Microsoft as a company at all, but after removing Office for the last 30 days and trying iWork apps as an experiment, I reinstalled Office. There were several things that I just could not get used to with iWork mostly related to workflow and funcational steps. I have tried Libreoffice on Mac as well and I use it exclusively on my Linux machines. But, I do agree with the Windows 95 like feel that TiggrToo mentions. Regarding Libeoffice, I also do not like having a single icon for all individual applications. To me, that is an unnecessary part of the suite of applications. I'd love to save the $100 a year for the Office subscription.

 

[chscag]

I'd love to save the $100 a year for the Office subscription.

LOL, me too. But if you wish to maintain document compatibility there really isn't much in the way of choice. I'm into my second year of subscribing to MS 365 so I guess Microsoft has me hooked. 😟

 

[mikebjammin]

I have been subscribing to Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) since it was first offered. I have absolutely no love for Microsoft as a company at all, but after removing Office for the last 30 days and trying iWork apps as an experiment, I reinstalled Office. There were several things that I just could not get used to with iWork mostly related to workflow and funcational stepsI have tried Libreoffice on Mac as well and I use it exclusively on my Linux machines. But, I do agree with the Windows 95 like feel that TiggrToo mentions. Regarding Libeoffice, I also do not like having a single icon for all individual applications. To me, that is an unnecessary part of the suite of applications. I'd love to save the $100 a year for the Office subscription.

At that point though I feel like I would just rather buy Office outright for $150.

 

[Moonjumper]

iWork and Libre both have their uses.

Keynote is the best for presentations, and formats well to PowerPoint unless you use features PP doesn’t have.

I use Libre for docs if I need to interact with Word at all, even if just as a .doc export. But I prefer Pages when I have the option, such as where I will be printing out or exporting to pdf.

 

[sracer]

Title. I have been using Microsoft Office 2011 since I got my MacBook Pro in 2013. Recently I noticed that it is very slow and can be glitchy at times, which makes sense as it is a 9 year old software. As I only need office apps for very basic needs (e.g., proofreading documents from work, some PowerPoint presentations, etc.) I was looking into the free options available. I have been messing around with both iWorks and LibreOffice.

I want to like Pages more than LibreOffice, however, it seems like LibreOffice gets the formatting of MS Word documents spot on most of the time while Pages always seems to be a little off. I do like KeyNotes better than the "Power Point" on LibreOffice. At the end of the day I'll probably just end up using a mixture of the two.

I guess I was just curious as to what others think about the two office apps. I appreciate any replies!

I'm a big fan of Apple iWork but LibreOffice does a much better job of working with MS Office documents.

I use 4 different office productivity suites: iWork, LibreOffice, MS Office, and Google Docs.

When I have to create documents that only I will be working on and printing, I use iWork. It is by far the most flexible in that it doesn't get in the way of document creation.

When I need to collaborate with others remotely/online, nothing beats Google Docs.

When I need absolute fidelity of document formatting with others, I use MS Office.

 

[Ruggy]

If you need to maintain compatibility with MS Office documents that you mentioned above from work, only MS Office is 100% compatible. LibreOffice is bloatware in my opinion and Pages does not do well with MS Word documents. Keynote is better with Powerpoint docs but not 100%.

Take a look at SoftMaker Free Office which you can download from here.

FreeOffice: The best free alternative to Microsoft Office

FreeOffice, the best free alternative to Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) for Windows, Mac and Linux

www.freeoffice.com

I have to strongly disagree with this.
One of the most irritating things about Office is that each new version isn't at all compatible with the old one.
It's just a sort of mantra repeated not based on any evidence at all that it has great compatibility
If you'd ever tried to send a document to thousands of people using multiple versions of Office you'd know what an awful headache it is.
OK, you can use .pdf but but if i you send it out in .docx, people still using older versions of Office (and there are loads) just simply won't be able to open them. They do this on purpose to force people to upgrade of course otherwise, as they have basically done nothing much to the program for more than 20 years, why would you bother?
If you sent them out in .doc then the formatting will probably be wrong for people on more recent versions and it you create a document on . docx and try to save it as .doc, it'll often mess it up before you send it
Then you've got the headache of templates, font substitutions, page breaks, tab stops, default paper sizes, printer margins....
Office makes no attempt whatsoever to ensure a document will open and look the same on any other computer to the one it's created on and if it did then it would be fair to say it is 100% compatible otherwise it just isn't. And it simply isn't.
But here's the odd thing: if you use Open Office or one of its variants, then it pretty much is.
It'll open any version of Word for example, and you'll end up with something that looks almost the same as the original.
It'll sort the fonts out better than Office too, although the page breaks and tabs might still need a bit of work.

 

[jlc1978]

But here's the odd thing: if you use Open Office or one of its variants, then it pretty much is.
It'll open any version of Word for example, and you'll end up with something that looks almost the same as the original.
It'll sort the fonts out better than Office too, although the page breaks and tabs might still need a bit of work.

That's the problem. "Something that looks almost the same as the original" is still problematic, which leads to people not using any of the OSS office suites.

I had a colleague who saved documents in an opend document format and it was a mess when opened in Word. Character spacing, for example is not always the same and thus page breaks get messed up. I finally got him to use .docx instead of .odt and the problems vanished and the customer stopped asking about formatting issues.

A standard that was interchangeable and editable would be nice. Maybe pdf will be that one day.