I am not an MS Office user, but I have seen the effect of format lock-in with Google Sheets. A few months back I began a project to de-Google my life, which went pretty smoothly until I tried to download my spouse's accounting spreadsheet from Google Sheets to Excel format. Both LibreOffice and Excel could open it, but nothing worked correctly. So for several months, I kept that one Google Sheet live until I could come up with an alternative. When I created the original file in Sheets, I was blindly using all sorts of features and capabilities (including Google Forms) that simply have no direct analog in other products.
A couple of days ago I bit the bullet and dug into the Excel file and figured out how to redesign everything and get it going again. Yay me. I'll admit I don't like the UI in LibreOffice, but I didn't like it very much when I first tried using it (as Star Office) back in the 90s either. Yet I keep coming back to it.
If I'm going to be locked into a format or app, I'd rather it be something like LibreOffice.
I wish the excel clones were better. LibreOffice’s UI is extremely dated imo, to the point it doesn’t even let you make a damn table, but at least what’s there works correctly.
OnlyOffice is not only missing some pretty basic functionality such as preferences (???), it also inexplicably deleted a single spreadsheet out of a multi-sheet file on two occasions on macOS and generally has some peculiar functionality and ux here and there.
I'm only a light user of office programs, both at work and at home. I have access to M365, but for my personal usage I prefer LibreOffice over MS Office, especially when it comes to spreadsheets. I generally don't mind the UI of the MS suite, but I find it's getting increasingly bloated and slow, and sometimes updates move UI elements around for no benefit that I can perceive. I haven't experienced the same with LibreOffice; it's lighter than MS Office I find it easier to find the options I'm looking for, which I know exist but don't always remember _where_ they live, because of the low frequency with which I use them.
With Excel in particular, there is something I can't put my finger on that I just don't get along with. It's unintuitive in a way that I can't describe, but which I notice about half the time I use it. Sometimes clicking doesn't do what I expect it to do, clipboard contents are lost all the time, scrolling resets or jumps around for reasons I don't understand. I don't have the same issues with LibreOffice Calc, which is why I choose it for my personal work. In fact, I think Google Sheets is the most pleasant to use of the options I've tried, which is something I thought I'd never say about a web-based alternative to a native app...
Regarding Excel's weird warts... Microsoft knows all about them but they're stuck with it for backwards compatibility. The business world has a billion Excel scripts and macros done by barely technical users that all inadvertently depend on the details of things like the scrolling and clipboard behavior. Trying to improve that would break all of that. Same as all the weirdness in JavaScript, Microsoft has to just call it a feature and live with it.
What I experienced with excel is that it provides an ability to edit cells, but then it suddenly jumps to another cell (IIRC when you press arrow keys as a text editor reflex). To disable this behavior click the cell then click the cell content field and edit there.
I'm surprised at all the comments deriding LibreOffice's interface on here. It's never given me any trouble (even when making tables) and I've been using it preferentially for 20 years over MSOffice, even when schools or employers are actively paying for my Microsoft subscription. In fact, LibreOffice does something very important a lot better than MSOffice: importing CSV files correctly across locales.
Yeah. This is the curse on any legacy software that doesn't enforce strict separation of logic and UI. Any larger change to the UI requires an awful lot of manpower that open source projects usually don't have.
I wonder if it would be possible to extract the spreadsheet data model and logic into a library completely separate from the UI. This would enable a diversity of UIs, and also interoperability between different tools.
each time someone sends me an xls or xlsx file, i am scared to open it in libresoft to mess up its formatting or miss something important. I always then rever to gsheet.
There is no Java in core LibreOffice, it just has some weird Java-based extension system because of its Sun history.
LibreOffice uses an extremely dated, also messy, homegrown UI toolkit and has resisted the idea of switching to something last (really) updated this millennium (sic).
I think I've tried every spreadsheet program still being maintained at this point. Try gnumeric, it's a clear cut above everything else.
Mandatory Excel rant: Excel can't be trusted with data destined for publication. It's bloated, buggy as hell, user hostile, and has set genetics research back with its utterly braindead autocorrect. The default plot options are the exact polar opposite of how data are presented in science, and almost impossible to make serviceable. Everything Excel touches ends up looking like a hastily thrown together 6th grade science project. Libreoffice is also riddled with serious bugs and also loses data, but hey it's free and not a decades old flagship product from a multi billion dollar tech company.
> Try gnumeric, it's a clear cut above everything else.
Gnumeric rocks, even features Montecarlo built-in, I have it installed in my personal machine, but a major limitation is that they stopped providing windows builds, up to the last time I checked, so I can't use it at work.
Hey, I'm very interested in this because LibreOffice annoys me and I can't explain why. It's not the "dated look" that everybody complains about; but I suspect it's related to UX somehow.
Could you articulate why Gnumeric is better than everything else?
I don't like any of the libreoffice/openoffice behemoths. I only ever used them because there wasn't anything better/comperable, so I will stay away from that discussion.
I like OnlyOffice. Their desktop apps are much lighter and better looking. They work fine for my light needs. They also do have a LOT more than just desktop apps.
The last time I mentioned them I was informed they are Russian. If that matters to you. It is actual open source software though. Perhaps the EU should fork it. :) (By the way I hadn't checked last time but, wikipedia says Latvian with Russian origin, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice. This page does say they are Russian, https://www.en-zdv.uni-mainz.de/2023/05/30/software-onlyoffi... and that they are switching to the open-source version.)
I logged in to the platform, not sharing the names myself, but basically:
* company was registered in Latvia in 2010 (e.g. included in VAT register over here)
* board has 1 member since 2009, registered in Russia (Russian passport)
* has 1 shareholder, Ascensio System Limited in the UK (05718967)
* has one beneficial owner, in 2023 updated data from Russia to Turkey (passport issued in Istanbul)
In 2024 their turnover was short of 3 million EUR, seems like profit wise in 2024 they're 1 million EUR in the red. Also not sure if the site is busted, but shows the number of employees as 1.
So yeah, the company is registered over here, seems like they're trying to distance themselves from Russia for obvious reasons. Not sure why the downvotes for the parent comment, that's probably nice to mention.
Following that up in the UK companies registry, the director of Ascensio System Limited started using a service address in London since May 2025. The same filing, however, notes that his usual residential address has remained unchanged, and appears to be in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
The beneficial owner is Onlyoffice Capital Group Pte. Ltd in Singapore.
It all seems surprisingly murky - you'd normally expect a relatively small organisation to have a more straightforward structure, even allowing for its international nature.
They might have one official employee but there are a bunch of people active on their github. They might be contractors or employees of a different related company.
Whatever you think of their origin, this shows we need better sandboxing of desktop apps. An office tool does not need access to the internet, and it does not need to access any files other than office files.
This is very true. I wouldn't want it to be like IOS or Android where the user itself is sandboxed and has to jump through hoops to do anything but it would be nice to be able to sandbox apps if the user wants.
It doesn't matter to me personally if it's open source. (There does seem to be some binary blobs involved in their software according to the cryptpad dicussion link I posted above. That I do not like).
I only mentioned it because it is a "thing" even though it is not my thing.
How does LibreOffice handle ODF standardization? If they want to add a new feature that result in changes how things are formatted visually, write they papers to update the ISO standard for ODF, working with other office suite implementers to achieve interoperability, wait a couple of years for the new standard with the changes getting published, and finally turn on the feature for users?
My impression is that this is more or less how ISO standards are supposed to work. Personally, I don't want to work in such an environment.
Well, that's almost how it work but of course without the waiting bits. The change would be added to LOExt namespace and would be written to the document and read on load. Then the change is proposed for inclusion into the next ODF version. Once the ODF version is released, LO would add support for that as well and changed if needed. On next save the feature would use the ODF version instead of LOExt.
The process has its issues and could cause problems, but in practice I don't remember anyone reporting issues.
Pretty much, and yes, this is not a desirable path for progress.
But communists have an absurd love for bureaucracy, and their need to control is unlimited, so they'll argue to the death about stupid shit instead of, you know, actually competing.
The 'fake open-source' debate is interesting, but OnlyOffice is still the best free alternative for anyone coming from MS Office. LibreOffice has a great mission, but their UI feels dated and the formatting issues with DOCX/XLSX files are still a deal-breaker for me.
Personally, I quite like being able to use the CUA keyboard shortcuts to access menu items. I like consistency over decades but I appreciate that there are other ways of looking at this.
LibreOffice on Windows still uses native Win32 controls. While you could call that a stylistic choice, even Microsoft has abandoned it for new apps.
This kind of UI is a dealbreaker for many new users, especially Gen Zers. How could open source conquer the world without attracting our youngest generations?
They should have bundled GTK like GIMP does. That would make the experience feel much less like it is from the XP era.
(I know these types of comments often get downvoted, but I challenge you to explain why you disagree.)
A big selling point for me. Needless reworking of familiar interfaces plagues
MS Windows ecosystem and I'm glad LibreOffice is displaying healthy conservatism
by not fixing what isn't broken.
LibreOffice constantly works on improving the import of the DOC/DOCX/XLS/XLSX/etc formats, thus if something doesn't work for you, it's better to file a bug in their bugtracker[1].
The site is making ordinary users (other than developers) shy away from submitting bug reports. Come on, you need to make a whole account in Bugzilla for you to report bugs? The best thing would be to have a "Report bug" window directly in the program that lets the user send complaints without hazzle!
Keep blasting, I do not care. I like OnyOffice. It feels very light and fast and handles my very limited and light usage with grace. LibreOffece in my opinion does not come close by feel.
Readit News
A couple of days ago I bit the bullet and dug into the Excel file and figured out how to redesign everything and get it going again. Yay me. I'll admit I don't like the UI in LibreOffice, but I didn't like it very much when I first tried using it (as Star Office) back in the 90s either. Yet I keep coming back to it.
If I'm going to be locked into a format or app, I'd rather it be something like LibreOffice.
In my experience, it’s much stricter than a standard spreadsheet though. It feels a bit like moving from Python to Java.
With Excel in particular, there is something I can't put my finger on that I just don't get along with. It's unintuitive in a way that I can't describe, but which I notice about half the time I use it. Sometimes clicking doesn't do what I expect it to do, clipboard contents are lost all the time, scrolling resets or jumps around for reasons I don't understand. I don't have the same issues with LibreOffice Calc, which is why I choose it for my personal work. In fact, I think Google Sheets is the most pleasant to use of the options I've tried, which is something I thought I'd never say about a web-based alternative to a native app...
LibreOffice Calc doesn’t have tables in the sense of Excel “insert > table”. People have been looking for it and asking for it for fourteen years in this thread: https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/creating-tables-in-calc/1433
https://www.ironcalc.com/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1198/tas.2011.09076
https://exceloffthegrid.com/excel-calculate-wrong-results/
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/microsoft-365...
I wonder if it would be possible to extract the spreadsheet data model and logic into a library completely separate from the UI. This would enable a diversity of UIs, and also interoperability between different tools.
It feels so bland and hard to read. Maybe that's because of java. How did Excel 5.0 look so good?
LibreOffice uses an extremely dated, also messy, homegrown UI toolkit and has resisted the idea of switching to something last (really) updated this millennium (sic).
Mandatory Excel rant: Excel can't be trusted with data destined for publication. It's bloated, buggy as hell, user hostile, and has set genetics research back with its utterly braindead autocorrect. The default plot options are the exact polar opposite of how data are presented in science, and almost impossible to make serviceable. Everything Excel touches ends up looking like a hastily thrown together 6th grade science project. Libreoffice is also riddled with serious bugs and also loses data, but hey it's free and not a decades old flagship product from a multi billion dollar tech company.
Gnumeric rocks, even features Montecarlo built-in, I have it installed in my personal machine, but a major limitation is that they stopped providing windows builds, up to the last time I checked, so I can't use it at work.
As a user of Libreoffice for years, me thinks you are doing fud.
Could you articulate why Gnumeric is better than everything else?
I like OnlyOffice. Their desktop apps are much lighter and better looking. They work fine for my light needs. They also do have a LOT more than just desktop apps.
The last time I mentioned them I was informed they are Russian. If that matters to you. It is actual open source software though. Perhaps the EU should fork it. :) (By the way I hadn't checked last time but, wikipedia says Latvian with Russian origin, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice. This page does say they are Russian, https://www.en-zdv.uni-mainz.de/2023/05/30/software-onlyoffi... and that they are switching to the open-source version.)
https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/desktop-apps
EDIT: Some more context. A cryptpad developer says
> we consider the OnlyOffice code upstream as "untrusted".
https://forum.cryptpad.org/d/232-onlyoffice-concerns-vendor-...
Here's the company info on a Latvian org registry: https://company.lursoft.lv/en/ascensio-system/40103265308
I logged in to the platform, not sharing the names myself, but basically:
In 2024 their turnover was short of 3 million EUR, seems like profit wise in 2024 they're 1 million EUR in the red. Also not sure if the site is busted, but shows the number of employees as 1.So yeah, the company is registered over here, seems like they're trying to distance themselves from Russia for obvious reasons. Not sure why the downvotes for the parent comment, that's probably nice to mention.
The beneficial owner is Onlyoffice Capital Group Pte. Ltd in Singapore.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
It all seems surprisingly murky - you'd normally expect a relatively small organisation to have a more straightforward structure, even allowing for its international nature.
They might have one official employee but there are a bunch of people active on their github. They might be contractors or employees of a different related company.
Please explain what you mean by this...
I think - we need to have software - not subject to political gimmicks - since countries can get into wars with each other & sanction each other etc
remember when Venezuela was sanctioned and they couldn't access Adobe 360 or whatever it's called.
I only mentioned it because it is a "thing" even though it is not my thing.
My impression is that this is more or less how ISO standards are supposed to work. Personally, I don't want to work in such an environment.
The process has its issues and could cause problems, but in practice I don't remember anyone reporting issues.
But communists have an absurd love for bureaucracy, and their need to control is unlimited, so they'll argue to the death about stupid shit instead of, you know, actually competing.
[1] https://fsfe.org/activities/msooxml/msooxml.en.html
How do you define dated in this context?
Personally, I quite like being able to use the CUA keyboard shortcuts to access menu items. I like consistency over decades but I appreciate that there are other ways of looking at this.
It looks ancient, worse than office apps from 20 years ago.
This kind of UI is a dealbreaker for many new users, especially Gen Zers. How could open source conquer the world without attracting our youngest generations?
They should have bundled GTK like GIMP does. That would make the experience feel much less like it is from the XP era.
(I know these types of comments often get downvoted, but I challenge you to explain why you disagree.)
A big selling point for me. Needless reworking of familiar interfaces plagues MS Windows ecosystem and I'm glad LibreOffice is displaying healthy conservatism by not fixing what isn't broken.
[1] https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=gui...
https://www.freeoffice.com/