How to run PowerPoint and Excel? I'm stuck with these for work?

INTPenis 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No libre office suite will ever be on par with Microsoft proprietary options. It's a constant race of keeping up with features, using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.

I've used Linux for 25+ years and my reaction is always to do my best with the options I have, but in those cases when it's not enough I just say "I'm sorry but I can't edit this document" or "sorry but some of the formatting was lost when I saved this in libreoffice".

The thing is that I'm a senior Linux specialist so people accept my excuses because they generally need my work.

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hnlmorg 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> It's a constant race of keeping up with features, using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.

What new features are Microsoft bringing out that are that critical for LibreOffice et al to catch up with?

I can’t think of much which I use that wasn’t already available in Office 95 which was released 30 years ago.

Aside from OOXML (which isn’t nearly as open as the name suggests) and the ribbon bar (which i personally hate), there hasn’t really been any big innovations.

The only features I can think of are:

- better security model for marcos. But that was only needed because MS Office was insecure to begin with so not really relevant here either

- Unicode support

- more rows in excel (though generally once you start reaching that point, the memory footprint of Excel becomes too great to make working on that spreadsheet practical)

The real issue with LibreOffice isn’t new features. It’s the subtle rending and parsing quirks when working on OOXML documents. But that’s likely Microsoft’s fault and thus OOXML working as intended.

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layer8 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Excel had tons of new and useful features over the past years.

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hnlmorg 7 hours ago | parent [-]

…and they are?

I don’t doubt there’s been plenty of new features. But are they significant enough that users on older versions or non-MS suites are left longing for the latest version of Excel?

I just don’t think there is much innovation left. Or at least not without changing the UX and/or paradigm significantly. Neither of which have happened.

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layer8 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Take a look here: https://www.icaew.com/technical/technology/excel-community/e.... There’s really been a sea change since around 2019. In the aggregate, they change how you work with Excel today.

	▲	hnlmorg 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for the share. These do look like really nice improvements. Albeit I wouldn’t say they’re significant enough that LibreOffice would struggle to keep up. But it is nice to see that Excel is still working on basic quality of life features.

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mqus 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.

I'm not even sure this is true. Isn't there some company (or more) like Collabora behind most of the dev work right now?

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ExpertAdvisor01 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Winapps is pretty good to run the Microsoft office suite. https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps

A office specific winapps fork : https://github.com/eylenburg/linoffice/

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everdrive 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you not have a work-issued computer? I'm not being flippant. I don't need to install _anything_ on my home PC for work. It's actively discouraged.

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cadamsdotcom 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Maybe in a VM.

Or try running via Wine.

You could also try LibreOffice or OnlyOffice and see if the documents are readable / writable.

Failing all that the web versions might work just fine.

	▲	viraptor 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Unless you need precise formatting because you will send someone nontrivial slides to present, libreoffice should be fine. Excel really depends - if you're using it as a glorified document with a table, then libreoffice will do fine. If you need compatibility and more advanced features, or your whole company runs on excel like a financial corp - there's no alternative. VM in that case.
	▲	theandrewbailey 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Failing all that the web versions might work just fine. I use ~~Office 365~~ the Microsoft 365 Copilot App online all the time on Debian at work.

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c7b 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Winboat should be able to run them: https://www.winboat.app/

As far as compatibility goes, OnlyOffice is fairly good at it, more geared towards MS-compatibility than LibreOffice, which is more of its own thing (and pretty good at that).

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ndkap 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

MS Office Online has been good with most of the things I need. Has that not been the experience for you?

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skinkestek 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can you use the online versions? They are starting to become usable now.

That is what we are supposed to do at work.

	▲	1over137 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Move my documents off my PC and give them to Microsoft?! As a way to stop using a Microsoft OS? It beggars belief.

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tonyhart7 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

dual boot

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viraptor 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Or a VM for just that purpose. Quickgui was discussed here recently for example to make this easier https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickgui

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al_borland 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This never lasts long, in my experience. It’s a nice idea, but it’s a huge pain. At some point, I always end up sticking with the OS that has what I need, which is never Linux. Linux is what I install when feeling idealistic, but it doesn’t allow me to do anything I can’t do on a mainstream OS that is mission critical to my life.

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tonyhart7 9 hours ago | parent [-]

so dual pc ???

	▲	al_borland 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I’d say commit. Force yourself to find new tools and workflows on the new OS of choice. If that isn’t possible, it seems like a waste of time and effort.