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MS Office vs Libre Office

mraam

mraam

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 26, 2011
27
3
OK I have been using MS Office 365 on PC now I am on Macbook Air, and MS Office from PC to Mac is a lot different, I have been thinking to get rid of the office and using Libre Office. I like the interface, I am not a BIG typer, I mainly use templates and updated existing documents, I do make some PPT's sometimes. I want to hear from real people what you think of ditching office for libre Office?

Thanks
Abdulah
 
It's a long time since I ditched Office so I don't have any experience with recent versions to go on, but I don't think you'll have any problems.
I used Word from I think Word95 up to about 2007?
I prefer Excel to Calc so if you use Excel a lot you might be disappointed.
Haven't used powerpoint much but have had to help with school projects and they always work perfectly with school computers and projectors. If you can be bothered to learn Keynote however it's streets better than both of them. No idea about compatibility however.
Templates, yes, but of course you'll have to create new templates. It's definitely the way to go though. I always like to use my own templates too.
Compared to Word, the biggest difference is you find most things under the 'page' menu when you right click. But you can do pretty much everything you could do in Word from there.
Being able to work on .pdf is a big plus but maybe more modern versions of Office do that too?
No problems with memory Plenty of fonts. Printing interface works perfectly.
It tends to handle old doc formats better than Word in my experience. I was sending documents to so many versions of Office all round the world, it was very obviously better at the older formats. My wife sometimes sends me documents she can't open on her work computer. Never failed yet.
I have to use English and French dictionaries and no problem with that either. I think that may actually be a plus.
I think that's about it
 
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If the documents are just for you, LibreOffice. Been using it for years, and prior to it, its parent OpenOffice, and has worked well for me. But my WP needs are pretty simple, no need for macros in Calc ("Excel"). Cross platform format with the toolsets to handle them across said platforms.

If need to collaborate, stick with Office as it is the default for business. Both LO and Apple's products generally do ok with MS documents, but have seen them mess things up.
 
mraam said:
OK I have been using MS Office 365 on PC now I am on Macbook Air, and MS Office from PC to Mac is a lot different, I have been thinking to get rid of the office and using Libre Office. I like the interface, I am not a BIG typer, I mainly use templates and updated existing documents, I do make some PPT's sometimes. I want to hear from real people what you think of ditching office for libre Office?

Thanks
Abdulah
Click to expand...
I'm a heavy user of: MS Office, LibreOffice, Google Docs suite, and Apple iWorks (Pages/Numbers/KeyNote). I've been on a journey to shift toward cross-platform software to allow me the flexibility to switch hardware.

How easy it will be for you to make a transition from MS Office 365 to LibreOffice will directly depend upon where the files are coming from (generated by you or sent to you by others) and how you create documents (basic vs advanced formatting and document structure).

For documents that I create (for myself or to send to others), LibreOffice is quite adequate... especially since I make heavy use of "styles" (paragraph styles and character styles). Format preservation is excellent.

For .docx documents that I receive from others, it's a very mixed bag. Most of the documents I receive don't use styles but rather manual adjustments to font, font size, typeface (bold, italic, etc.). The appearance and layout of these documents aren't always preserved.

I find LibreOffice's document structure (sections, headers, etc.) to be more cumbersome than MS Office's, but I think if I were only using LibreOffice, it would be easier (rather than having switch between the different paradigms).

I agree with your assessment regarding the differences between MS Office on Windows and Mac OS. They're very different... and don't get me started on the bloatedness of Office for Mac.
 
Ruggy said:
Being able to work on .pdf is a big plus but maybe more modern versions of Office do that too?
Click to expand...

Word can convert a .pdf to .docx (happens automatically when you open a .pdf using Word) but can't edit the PDF directly if that's what you mean. And of corurse you can then convert the .docx back to .pdf when you're done editing.
 
Here's an area where LibreOffice SHINES:
Opening OLD files from other applications.
Libre can open old (and I do mean "old") files from long-gone Mac applications.

If you encounter a file that modern software won't open, try Libre.
You may be pleasantly surprised!
(worth keeping a copy of Libre around for this reason alone)
 
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mraam said:
I want to hear from real people what you think of ditching office for libre Office?
Click to expand...
I've tried Numbers and OpenOffice as replacements for Excel. I like OpenOffice a lot more than Numbers, because most of my Excel habits and muscle memory allowed me to just start using OpenOffice. Numbers works so differently from Excel that I didn't want to spend the time learning how to use it.
 
Thanks for all the responses, I have found out that in my group of people that I share/send to are all on PC's I am the only smart one on a real machine hehe my shot at the PC world. I will drop MS Office for now and see where I can go.

Thanks again.
 
Fishrrman said:
Here's an area where LibreOffice SHINES:
Opening OLD files from other applications.
Libre can open old (and I do mean "old") files from long-gone Mac applications.

If you encounter a file that modern software won't open, try Libre.
You may be pleasantly surprised!
(worth keeping a copy of Libre around for this reason alone)
Click to expand...
Ha! I forgot that I use LibreOffice to load old ClarisWorks files. ?
 
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