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Hi,
Before I decide to download your software I wanted to check on its compatibility with other providers ie microsoft office, word, excel as I use those at work but need to do work at home sometimes using sheets already created in microsoft.
Thanks
Paul
Wow !, this is a very complex question depends on many factors.
My first and last recommendation is that download LibreOffice and try it
with your documents. LibreOffice is a Free and Open Source project, you
have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
About factors:
- LibreOffice has excellent filters import/export to Office documents
(doc, docx, pptx, etc.)
- LibreOffice can be connected directly to onedrive, Sharepoint and
other remote services (try to activate the native dialogs)
- The design of your documents will remain depending on usage styles,
direct formatting, typography or unique elements of MS Office (like
smartart forms).
- The import of macros is limited and not recommended.
And much more...
Quote: "I wanted to check on its compatibility with other providers ie microsoft office . . ." What other "providers" do you need to be compatible with? That other office packages are you using, and what different file formats are you using? You should find that LibreOffice will handle what you are using in the way of "office documents". It sure covers all of my home/office needs.
I get MS Office documents sent to me all the time [it seems] and had very little problems with them. The only issue I have had, was when the person created a very complex document with the latest version of Word that others with the previous version could not view properly as well.
I do not use PowerPoint or LO's Impress hardly at all. I seem to stick with Writer and Calc [Word and Excel] documents. I prefer not to use the MS OOXML formats and stick with older .doc and .xlt formats so there would be no compatibility issues between all the different MS Office versions and their individually defined OOXML formats that plaguing some MS Office users. The issue is since each time a new version of Office comes out, MS "redefines" the OOXML formats just enough that sometimes documents created by the newest version do not display correctly previous versions - i.e. create a .docx document with newest version of Word and then hope that it displays correctly on Word that was bought 3 or 4 years ago.
LibreOffice keeps having the filters, that import/export MS Office document, as up-to-date as possible.
I stopped using MS Office since the 2003 version. I still have the Office 2003 media, but I cannot afford to keep buying the "latest and greatest" [so they say] since they keep telling the people I know that they "must" get the newest version of Office to "compete". I stopped using MS's Office packages in 2004 or 2005. Now that most of my work is done on Linux systems, you must use an alternative to MS. LibreOffice is the best I have used. It has been that way since LibreOffice came out.
The great thing about LibreOffice is the cross-platform ability. There are more platforms [i.e. Windows, Linux, Mac] that support LibreOffice than MS Office, plus more supported "native languages" - 100+ so far I believe.
The only way to know how compatible software is with your existing
systems and workflow, is to install it, and use it.
For some people, the differences in documents produced by MSO, EO, LibO,
AnOO, etc. are virtually non-existent. For other people, the
differences in documents by those programs are so significant, that they
regard them as mutually incompatible programs.
jonathon
What do these abreviations mean?
MSO - Microsoft Office (this is a guess!)
EO - because i'm Dutch, the first thing i think about is 'Evangelische Omroep' (http://www.eo.nl) But that has nothing to do with an Office package......
LibO - LibreOffice Office (http://www.libreoffice.org/)
AnOO - no clue.......
etc - are there more packages that do something like LibO, Microsoft Office and/od Apache Open Office ?
hmmmmz, not bad, 2 out of 4 (maybe) correct...... 
MSO, EO, LibO,
AnOO, etc.What do these abbreviations mean?
MSO - Microsoft Office (this is a guess!)
EO - because i'm Dutch, the first thing i think about is 'Evangelische
* EuroOffice: A European Fork of OOo;
* AnOO: An Android fork of OOo;
* AOo: Apache Open Office;
are there more packages that do something like LibO, Microsoft Office and/od Apache Open Office ?
There are roughly 100 office suites that have pretensions of claiming
some degree of compatibility with ODF and MSO file formats.
jonathon
I was wondering the same thing. Even the *List of office suites - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia* (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_office_suites), though it lists dozens of office suites, does not list suites that can match all the above acronyms.
* EuroOffice: A European Fork of OOo;
EuroOffice cannot be found on the internet, just found 1 link here from 2008
https://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal in the picture 'The Legacy of OpenOffice.org'
* AnOO: An Android fork of OOo;
* AOo: Apache Open Office;
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andropenoffice&hl=en
mentiones: AOO AndrOpen Office
a lot of naming confusions here
Being _in_compatible is one of the most important parts of the Microsoft
business model and they do a very good job making compatibility as
difficult as possible. In the end the "ordinary end user"(tm) will
always blame the vendor of the other software but not Microsoft.
Breaking this business model by a free and open and simplier document
standard is the one and only reason why LibreOffice exists.
"Compatibility" with foreign document formats allows you to convert
documents and templates to the open standard but it is not intended that
you keep on working with Microsoft documents while using another
software although this may work to a certain degree. The real trouble
starts when a crashed foreign document can't be restored and you don't
have your own backup of the file.
Regarding "compatibility" with Microsoft document formats, only MS
software can open these formats almost perfectly. In rare cases there
are incompatibilities with recent MS Office versions opening documents
from the 90ies. Documents from the 80ies are lost until you find some
converter to extract the written text at least. Some doc/xls files that
can't be opened with MS Office open fine with LibreOffice.
Second best choice regarding MS document formats is http://softmaker.de
Third best is LibreOffice.
Recent versions of MS Office claim to support LibreOffice's ODF (Open
Document Format) which is a good thing.
Andreas Säger wrote
Hi,
Before I decide to download your software I wanted to check on its
compatibility with other providers ie microsoft office, word, excel as I
use those at work but need to do work at home sometimes using sheets
already created in microsoft.Thanks
Paul
Sent from Samsung tablet
Being _in_compatible is one of the most important parts of the Microsoft
business model and they do a very good job making compatibility as
difficult as possible. In the end the "ordinary end user"(tm) will
always blame the vendor of the other software but not Microsoft.
Breaking this business model by a free and open and simplier document
standard is the one and only reason why LibreOffice exists.
"Compatibility" with foreign document formats allows you to convert
documents and templates to the open standard but it is not intended that
you keep on working with Microsoft documents while using another
software although this may work to a certain degree. The real trouble
starts when a crashed foreign document can't be restored and you don't
have your own backup of the file.Regarding "compatibility" with Microsoft document formats, only MS
software can open these formats almost perfectly. In rare cases there
are incompatibilities with recent MS Office versions opening documents
from the 90ies. Documents from the 80ies are lost until you find some
converter to extract the written text at least. Some doc/xls files that
can't be opened with MS Office open fine with LibreOffice.
Second best choice regarding MS document formats is http://softmaker.de
Third best is LibreOffice.
Recent versions of MS Office claim to support LibreOffice's ODF (Open
Document Format) which is a good thing.
+1 -- I don't understand why this is such a hard concept for folks to grasp
Also--if you must work both ways MS Office <--> LibreOffice, export from MS
Office's native format (OOXML) to ODF for work in LibreOffice. And then
send it back to MS Office in ODF from LibreOffice--not the filter based
export to OOXML.
ODF is the standard supported, not OOXML (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx)
Once back in MS Office save to OOXML if you need to exchange with other MS
Office users.
Try it, you'll find it functional that way. Less so if you try to send
OOXML back and forth.
V Stuart Foote wrote
+1 -- I don't understand why this is such a hard concept for folks to
grasp
I found that a whole lot of people suffer from the misconception that their
document files contain computer instructions. When I select a portion of
text, click the bold button and save the document then the file contains a
clear and unambiguous computer instruction that this portion of text has to
be painted in bold font.
EuroOffice cannot be found on the internet
EuroOffice 2015 for Windows and Linux can be found at
http://www.multiracio.com/index.php .
The page proclaims EuroOffice 2014, but if you click on it, it takes you
to the download page for EuroOffice 2015.
EuroOffice for Android can be found in the Google Play Store.
a lot of naming confusions here
True.
However, it isn't as confusing as when the various localizations of OOo
offered different features and functions.
jonathon
- "ordinary end user"(tm) People will trademark anything these days. What's next? "the water is blue" or "the sun rises in the east"? - http://softmaker.de Never heard of this product. Plus I am not interested in buying another office suite that needs to be bought over again, and again, to keep it up-to-date. - MS Office claim to support LibreOffice's ODF LibreOffice does not own the rights to ODF formats, but it uses THE International Standard format[s] that is the Open Document Format. As I understand it, MS Office does not support it fully with its newer versions. MS wanted their OOXML open format to be the ISO format, but ODF was chosen instead. Last time I heard anything about it, MS does not even support their proposed open OOXML standard when they proposed it to the "commission". LibreOffice has supported ODF since LiberOffice's first office suite version. - crashed foreign document can't be restore First, what is a "foreign document". Second, I have crashed a few documents from some Windows problems and LibreOffice seems to restore these documents properly. - Breaking this business model by a free and open and simplier document standard is the one and only reason why LibreOffice exists.
I do not agree with this. LibreOffice, for me, was a great way to have a very good replacement for MS Office, on computers that do not run Windows or for those who just got tired [and could not afford] buying new versions of MS Office all the time. Why don't you try that "only reason" bull on all of the European users, businesses, and government agencies, that have dropped MS Office in favor of LibreOffice. They will give you answers to you that I will not repeat here, since it would take many pages to state them all, but I agree with some of their reasons.
Another reason is the fact that I find LibreOffice easier to use than the newest version of MS Office's trial versions, since I cannot afford to buy it.
Also, I do not think ODF is a simpler document format. It can create/save documents in a much more complex design than I will ever use myself. Being "open source", there are people in the community that are looking for ways to improve the way ODF does it job and ways to add more formatting options to ODF so it will continue to give the software designers more formatting options for their users.
FYI for everyone, Softmaker has a free version of their software, Freeoffice. A web search should find you something about that.
WPS (formerly Kingsoft) Office also has free and paid for versions.
Both support MS Office file formats, and have free mobile versions of their software.
- "ordinary end user"(tm) People will trademark anything these days. What's next? "the water is blue" or "the >sun rises in the east"?
The trademark is not everything, but I think it does not matter if there are many office products (software) and these are proprietary software, free, open source, etc., as long as they respect all the ODF standard and can interoperate with each other. The end user choose the software you want to use.
- MS Office claim to support LibreOffice's ODF LibreOffice does not own the rights to ODF formats, but it uses >THE International Standard format[s] that is the Open Document Format. As I understand it, MS Office does not >support it fully with its newer versions. MS wanted their OOXML open format to be the ISO format, but ODF was >chosen instead.
Unfortunately the "Office Open XML" format is an ECMA standard (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm) and ISO/IEC standard (http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_tc_browse.htm?commid=45374).
Furthermore, there is a lack regarding the use of standard office formats MS Office and LibreOffice.
- By default, LibreOffice saves documents in extended OpenDocument format (advanced versions of the standard in the future will become the stricter standard).
Therefore, if you want to operate in a better way with other applications, you must configure LibreOffice to save documents in the strict OpenDocument format (http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=43485).
- On the other hand, MS Office supports the strict Open Document format (implementation is bad anyway) and works with the OOXML standard. However, MS Office save document in OOXML transitional format and (I do not know if can be configured to save in strict OOXML format.). In addition, there is much inconsistency between OOXML formats because each version of MS Office saves documents in a different format (draft?) and that brings chaos.
- Breaking this business model by a free and open and simplier document standard is the one and only reason why >LibreOffice exists.
The open and free format already exists since 2006 (ODF), but as I said, Microsoft and the imposition of its format has managed to become a double standard and for more, prevents proper implementation for alternatives (through drafts , proprietary fonts, etc.) for users to prefer your product.
Another reason is the fact that I find LibreOffice easier to use than the newest version of MS Office's trial >versions, since I cannot afford to buy it.
Each user has the ability to choose. For me, WPS office (https://www.wps.com)would be a good option if you will support the OpenDocument format.
Also, I do not think ODF is a simpler document format. It can create/save documents in a much more complex >design than I will ever use myself. Being "open source", there are people in the community that are looking for >ways to improve the way ODF does it job and ways to add more formatting options to ODF so it will continue to >give the software designers more formatting options for their users.
I agree. Now the problem for developers is that there are two standard formats and each choose to implement.
For me the future is LibreOffice, but who knows ... some time ago for me was the future OpenOffice.org.
Cheers
"Ordinary end user" is a trade marked phrase for what company?
Yes, that is the question.
I saw on a computer commercial - cannot remember which company - trademarked "hit the ground running". I have been using that phrase since the late 60's. Now it is trademarked for a computer company that all I remember about the commercial was the phrase.