Best free office suite?

[Kabob]

I've been using OpenOffice for a while but just reformatted my PC and wondered if LibreOffice or a different office suite was any better? I've personally never had any qualms with OpenOffice but my I put it on my Father In Law's machine and it continuously reverts the save type from .doc to .odf which he hates.

Any other/better options?

 

[lxskllr]

LibreOffice. You really should use .odf as much as possible. That way you won't be locked into proprietary formats. It's an open standard, that's well supported. When you use proprietary formats, the data isn't yours. It belongs to whoever made the format.

If someone needs a copy in a proprietary format you can either tell them to get a reader that's standards compliant, or export your .odf to the proprietary format they want. It depends on how much of a dick you want to be :^D

 

[gmaster456]

On machines that don't have MS office on them, I use OpenOffice. If it worked for you, I don't see the point in changing. Some will say Libre is better, some may say Openoffice is better. It's just personal preference.

 

[lxskllr]

On machines that don't have MS office on them, I use OpenOffice. If it worked for you, I don't see the point in changing. Some will say Libre is better, some may say Openoffice is better. It's just personal preference.

I think LibreOffice is objectively better at this point. ApacheOpenOffice is dead in the water, and LibreOffice has taken off. They've trimmed the code substantially, added support, and removed bugs. ApacheOpenOffice is the same as it was when Oracle mismanaged it.

 

[Barfo]

thepiratebay\office2010.torrent

XD

Not funny
-ViRGE

 

[Dasda]

I use OpenOffice on a Ubuntu laptop I have. I find it just as good as MS office. Need to install a few plugins though for certain things.

 

[Kabob]

I went with Libre, feels VERY similar to OpenOffice (which I suppose is a good thing for me), feels sleeker though.

Thanks for the input!

 

[VinylxScratches]

IBM has a free solution I believe.

 

[lxskllr]

IBM has a free solution I believe.

Lotus Symphony. They're going to start migrating to Apache OpenOffice over the next couple years though.

 

[zokudu]

I use LibreOffice on my Linux laptop.

Its sad but the only thing I really miss from Office 2010 are the good powerpoint templates but that's easy to fix.

 

[SickBeast]

LibreOffice is very nice. My one gripe is that it takes longer to load than MS Word. It's also somewhat lacking in terms of interface, but it's livable and it gets the job done.

It's amazing how much freeware there is now. Just boot up a Linux Mint DVD if you want to see what's out there. It's quite amazing.

 

[oynaz]

LibreOffice. You really should use .odf as much as possible. That way you won't be locked into proprietary formats. It's an open standard, that's well supported. When you use proprietary formats, the data isn't yours. It belongs to whoever made the format.

If someone needs a copy in a proprietary format you can either tell them to get a reader that's standards compliant, or export your .odf to the proprietary format they want. It depends on how much of a dick you want to be :^D

Microsoft Office can read .odf fine these days, btw. I think you need a free plugin for 2003 and 2007. It is native in 2010.

 

[mikeymikec]

LibreOffice is very nice. My one gripe is that it takes longer to load than MS Word. It's also somewhat lacking in terms of interface, but it's livable and it gets the job done.

It's amazing how much freeware there is now. Just boot up a Linux Mint DVD if you want to see what's out there. It's quite amazing.

On Win7, LibreOffice takes as long as MSOffice 2007 on my machine (three seconds or less).

 

[mikeymikec]

Microsoft Office can read .odf fine these days, btw. I think you need a free plugin for 2003 and 2007. It is native in 2010.

I haven't checked 2010, but 2007's odf support is a joke - for example, opening an OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) results in the formulae being stripped out of a spreadsheet and just the (strangely enough, correctly calculated - methinks MS did this on purpose) values left.

 

[oynaz]

Well, all of Excel 2007 is a joke. But good info nevertheless.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Just tried Libre office and it seems really nice. had open office before but i think this is better because java isn't required to use it.

 

[dbcooper1]

How do you handle macros in spreadsheet when using the open source versions?

 

[gmaster456]

I think LibreOffice is objectively better at this point. ApacheOpenOffice is dead in the water, and LibreOffice has taken off. They've trimmed the code substantially, added support, and removed bugs. ApacheOpenOffice is the same as it was when Oracle mismanaged it.

From an end user standpoint, I really don't know why/how one is better than the other.

 

[Blazer7]

From an end user standpoint, I really don't know why/how one is better than the other.

Just have a look at the rate that the Open Document Foundation releases new versions. A closer look at the release notes of every ver shows that they are making good progress.

It is clear that the level of support is what does make the difference between the two. For instance, have a look at the development of the portable editions for both suits.

Openoffice portable is still on ver 3.3.0 which is where Oracle left it where Libreoffice portable is on par with the main suit (3.5.3)

That shows that the Apache Foundation has done nothing to very little there and that speaks for itself. Besides, it's a well known fact that most Openoffice devs jumped ship and that forced Oracle to stop development of Openoffice and in the end led them to donate the source code to the Apache foundation.

All and all lxskllr is right. ApacheOpenOffice is dead in the water.

 

[AFurryReptile]

I've been using Google Docs. With GDrive's offline mode, you can even launch the docs from folders on your computer.

The editor is pretty basic, but I like the clean interface and a lot of the automated features like bullets and spacing are much nicer than LibreOffice.

Of course, LibreOffice is more robust, but it's been overkill for what I need. I've had trouble finding documentation for it that helps me do things I could in MS Office, which pissed me off in the past.

 

[gmaster456]

Giving libre office a try. Maybe it's worth replacing openoffice on my machines that don't have Office 2010.

 

[TheSlamma]

Microsoft Skydrive

I tried Google docs and it trashed all my .doc/.docx formatting and then completly obliterated every excel doc I imported too.

 

[ultimatebob]

LibreOffice. You really should use .odf as much as possible. That way you won't be locked into proprietary formats. It's an open standard, that's well supported. When you use proprietary formats, the data isn't yours. It belongs to whoever made the format.

If someone needs a copy in a proprietary format you can either tell them to get a reader that's standards compliant, or export your .odf to the proprietary format they want. It depends on how much of a dick you want to be :^D

Yeah... just don't try that approach with recruiters and HR people if you want to get a job, though. If they want a Word document, you send them a Word document.

 

[GrumpyMan]

I have to use what my customers use and unfortunately it's not Libre Office, it's MS Office 2003-2010. Also it's not on the accepted corporate mandate of software to use that we have to abide by. May try it at home sometime though.