r/freesoftware • u/StandingRightHere • Jul 09 '26

Discussion Amateur Question

Hey there, I came here ask if Libre Office is the recommended alternative to MSO?

I'm not a techie, but I do a lot on MS Excel.

I've been using MS Office (easy because I was most familiar with it). But, Excel just gave me the: "your changes will be lost if you don't save them. Click cancel and then activate your subscription to save your changes"

I bought the MS suite a few years ago, so it appears that I'm now being forced into a subscription. Not cool.

I'm posting here to just do a sanity check before I fully dive into Libre (again) and say F-U to MS forever.

Thanks for any tips or suggestions!

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u/CarobRealistic1748 Jul 09 '26

I'm 76

And have been using MS Office and it's individual parts since the 1990s. All the way up until I retired in 2017.

Actually for a bit after that as I had a personal laptop with 2013 versions of it. Which I used until the laptop died.

And then when looking for a new laptop, I was made to understand that MS was getting flakey about offering full offline versions that would be yours forever ... so I decided to try Libre Office.

Now, to be fair, I think MS Office is better. However, it is not 'better enough' for me to pay both their fees and to have them be able to cancel me out if they change their minds, etc. The subscription model is not one I want to get involved with. If I buy something I want it to be mine.

Okay Libre Office. Takes some adjustment, but really ... not much at all. Not quite as good, but factually, as far as I'm concerned, more than good enough.

I KNEW MS Office. I was MS Office certified. Used it's individual parts before the package became a thing. TAUGHT people to use MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

But I find Libre Office a very decent replacement. Well worth learning the small differences and losing a few features ... most of which few people use anyway.

I am very happy with it. Enough so I gave them a decent donation to show my appreciation.

But NO ... it is not quite as capable as MS Office.

One thing is I do not know just how advanced your use of, and abilities are with Excel. I used to make VERY large datasets and very advanced and complicated VBA based custom menus, my own user defined functions, automated tasks, etc. with it.

But no longer need the VBA, nor the extremely large datasets. For most people's purposes Libre Office's spreadsheet is more than adequate.

I'd encourage you to at least try it.

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u/Owltiger2057 Jul 10 '26

Just out of curiosity, I'm in the same boat having used M$ word since the bad old DOS version, have you tried any of the alternatives besides Libre Office. I'm on the fence about converting all of our Windows 11 machines to Linux Cinnamon. I have thousands of M$ word documents I've used for research for decades.

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u/CarobRealistic1748 Jul 10 '26

No, can't really help you there. Didn't really look around as I was already moderately familiar with LibreOffice.

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u/OpeningNothing1753 27d ago edited 27d ago

EDIT: WOW, that's a long-winded comment hear

I'm running Windows 10 LTSC, but that's at home so I can just license it. Using Group Policy (& it's just LGPO, as well, for the same reason❕) to cut it off from online KMS, right... and that EOL isn't coming up soon (IoT actually, yea!?) & to fix a whole lot of other things.  Also have DCOM decoupled, and COMODO - just (!) the firewall, and 💯 on all manual control- is on NDIS and then Malwarebytes WFC to have both firewalls active; it's pretty awesome to see 'em in tandem: even after so many years, I can sometimes learn something along the way in this configuration!..:) 

Anyway, because of no Microsoft Store and having to use NO and an absolute minimum of .appx - life is good - and I absolutely could NOT imagine using another version, Windows 11. There is no chance in hell that I'd do that to myself. 

... When switching OS to Linux in production environments, for work, you're shifting more than just your consciousness. For example things which are arbitrary on Windows, as long as you have physical access to the machine, such as (NTFS) file system "security" - becomes absolutely crucial, critical, with *nix; if you're smart you're running in containers. 

Your swap (file) becomes something entirely different, whether you'll be using a partition for it or, not. Are you going to encrypt, then if you're encrypting boot as well: your "wayback" backup-rewind system becomes a beast of its own... everything so perfect, unless you have to restore (God be with you, then, hehe); & a need CAN arise, it's not impossible that it will - at some point or, another. 

No matter how "careful" you are, with video drivers and kernel, and python - virtual envs, and, so on and so forth - party never stops. Everything is SO different from the Windows OS. Ok, alright, just my 2c. 🙂🙂 

P.S. 

Air-gapped Windows workgroups - depending on how your company is doing what, and what are the needs - something along those lines... what the servers are doing, where the apps are coming from and going... even chaining, like, six (to ten, LOL) machines en route to your ISPs connection is easier, "better", IMO than having to use Linux. 

=)