SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have a perpetual license for Office Pro 2013, but it's not certified for Windows 11. It was great for the laptop I bought in 2014. I have a new laptop, and as soon as they allow the task bar to be on the left or right of the screen or shortly before they end the free upgrade, I'll go to Win 11.

LibreOffice is an open source - free - replacement for MS Office. I've used the word processor and spreadsheet a lot and the presentation piece for one short presentation. I haven't done anything complex, but some of the docs I've saved or read are pretty sophisticated, and they've been rendered correctly, as far as I can see.

IOW, screw MS Office and Office 365. I have no need to rent the software; screw MS, even though they've given me and other window users a free OS (unless you're building your own PC) and a couple of free browsers that have to be used for some websites.

OTOH, if you need sophisticated features that work well in MS Office, this might not work for you.

Has anyone here had to dump LibreOffice or its successors because of things that it can't do but MS Office can?

I tried Open Office in 2014, and it just wasn't compatible enough with MS Office docs then. I haven't had a single problem with LibreOffice in 5 months of use.

Or am I again behind the times for not using Google Docs? I would use that, except that I think Google as at least as intrusive and grasping as MS....

[This message edited by SI Staff at 9:54 PM, Saturday, April 2nd]

Hi sisoon,
I use LibreOffice and it's great. With my newest laptop (Windows 10; I had the opportunity to upgrade gratis to 11, but I declined) I don't have Word because I'd have to pay for it. If I need to convert to docx or pdf I use a free conversion site. If I'm going to print any documents, I have to email them to myself to the upstairs printer. It's a bit convoluted but works for us old geezers. H's PC runs Windows 7 (which I truly, truly miss) and sometimes the emailed document (odt) doesn't render correctly. I did use Google Docs on H's computer to edit before printing and that was fine.
But it's easiest for me to convert most documents to pdf because I imbed images in my sermons which are emailed to the congregants along with the Sunday service bulletin.

I used Open Office/Libre Office years ago. I tend towards Google Docs now. I have an O365 license through work so I tend to use that and onedrive for work and google docs and drive for personal. Google is just a bad but for my uses I don't have to pay them. My biggest fear from them is they will randomly decide to discontinue one or more of the services I use.

sisoon,
Are you looking to update your permanent-license office to the current version? I just had to do that since Macs don't support 32-bit applications anymore and my old office 2011 that I got for 10 bucks through the employee home purchase program no longer works, unless I wanted to keep running an old OS version that isn't supported anymore..... I have the same issues that you did, I refuse to "rent" software, and I really don't want to pay $300 for a "permanent" license. Anyway, if you're looking to upgrade instead of looking for a better alternative, let me know, I have a couple resources you may be interested in....

Thanks, but LibreOffice meets all my needs now, and my needs are not likely to grow bigger.

Some to think of it, our son is a teacher....

I have used LibreOffice for a long time. The recent versions have made significant improvements in both reading and writing files that are compatible with the MS tools. It also natively supports exporting to PDF so everything I need is just there. I do still have a couple MS licenses for personal use and I do use MS extensively for work. For me there are a few things the tools do differently, but all the functionality I need is in both and is compatible. At this point I almost switch automatically between the two.