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As much as it would be nice to have an alternative to MS Office, it seems like a lot of these 'killers' focus on the wrong things that are needed. 1. Completel

As much as it would be nice to have an alternative to MS Office, it seems like a lot of these 'killers' focus on the wrong things that are needed. 1. Completely offline use, including local save, backups etc. Which goes completely against the cloud. But this is something that Microsoft got right with 365. I can install it and use it completely isolated from the internet and still collaborate online if needed. 2. Academic writing features, like citations, footnotes, and things like that. No alternative I have tried has ever been able to easily do these things, and MS Office has them all built in. 3. Suite interoperability. I need to be able to make a chart in Excel. Copy and Paste (Ctrl+C/V, not some export process) it over to Word in the document, then paste it into PowerPoint for the presentation. Or maybe save it out as a PNG for Latex or something.

daveguy 10y ago
If you haven't tried LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org/ https://www.libreoffice.org/) in a while I highly recommend it. Works great with Zotero for citations and they have fixed a lot of the formatting issues in Writer/Word and data manipulation shortcomings in Calc/Excel. I haven't needed MS Office for 4 months.
- Dayshine 10y ago
  The problem with LibreOffice is that it has terrible Word compatibility. Documents just come out looking completely different. Tables go over extra pages, text is randomly overlayed, etc.
  - buovjaga 10y ago
    Well, at least we are documenting the problems, you can filter by "docx" to see for yourself: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Tracking_Bugs https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Tracking_Bugs So it's easy to jump in, if one has a passion to fix interop issues..
  - LeifCarrotson 10y ago
    In my experience, this typically happens if you're using the manual layout systems, nudging and adjusting image sizes and text boxes pixel by pixel until the output is "perfect." This is brittle even in Word. You should be able to insert a section or paragraph without messing up your whole document. Instead, use paragraph breaks, page breaks, and styles to typeset the document. Choose top/bottom wrapping of images, and keep tables simple and clean. It usually looks better, it's easier to edit later, and it just works in whatever editor you're using - whether Office 97, Office 2017, Google Docs, or exporting to HTML.
    - Dayshine 10y ago
      I can't control what others do in the documents they send me...
  - oever 10y ago
    The problem with Word is that it has terrible LibreOffice compatibility.
    - thatguy0900 10y ago
      And if word were trying to replace libre office, that might be the case.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  I also love it to the point of having it installed even when I have access to Word. My reason is because I find it much better to clean up other peoples weird formatting (yep, seems some people don't use styles. Or use styles and then go over and fix every heading manually or something.)
- Bedon292 10y ago
  I have, and at least for my purposes it did not fit the bill. It has been a little while, and maybe they got footnotes working finally, but before they were horrendous. And yes the Zotero plugin is nice. Libre Office is definitely the closest alternative to MS Office, but just not quite there for me. I do recommend it all the time for people who are very lightweight users though.
  - daveguy 10y ago
    Have you tried it since version 5.2? Previous versions didn't cut it for me either. This one does. For one, it now has multi-column copy/paste in Calc.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  I came back to LibreOffice recently. Hoping not to experience previous problems. It soon bungled a save of one of its own documents causing me hours of work. I expect to go back to Word, sigh.
bradleyjg 10y ago
"2. Academic writing features, like citations, footnotes, and things like that. No alternative I have tried has ever been able to easily do these things, and MS Office has them all built in." There are dozens of things like this for different niches. You need citation tools, someone else couldn't do his job without pivot tables, someone else uses imported shapes in powerpoint ten times a day, and so forth and so on. That's a big reason that I'm skeptical anyone will be "killing" MS office anytime soon.
- Bedon292 10y ago
  Right, there are so many 'little' things in MS Office, that people use all the time. It is likely that no one person is using all the features, but on any given day all of the features are key to someone's job. And since they have the home field advantage, it will be a long time before anyone can come close to killing it.
  - amelius 10y ago
    That's the first time I read that "feature-creep" is actually a good thing :)
    - pacaro 10y ago
      It's complicated! The crazy feature bloat is a real negative for Word, and yet also a huge strength. It's interesting look at documents produced and consumed by different industries to get a real grasp on the variety of use cases Oh, and a legal document written in Word 2.0 an æon ago needs to have every word on the same line, and paginate identically on every subsequent version
    - ghaff 10y ago
      It isn't necessarily. It's perfectly reasonable to have a streamlined product that supports those features that are most commonly used. And to tell someone that wants the other 90% of features that get 10% of the use to go with some other product. On the other hand, if your objective is to build something that does incorporate more or less every feature that people use, then you're going to need a lot of features because so many workflows have specialized requirements in some area.

daveguy 10y ago

If you haven't tried LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org/ https://www.libreoffice.org/) in a while I highly recommend it. Works great with Zotero for citations and they have fixed a lot of the formatting issues in Writer/Word and data manipulation shortcomings in Calc/Excel. I haven't needed MS Office for 4 months.

Dayshine 10y ago
The problem with LibreOffice is that it has terrible Word compatibility. Documents just come out looking completely different. Tables go over extra pages, text is randomly overlayed, etc.
- buovjaga 10y ago
  Well, at least we are documenting the problems, you can filter by "docx" to see for yourself: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Tracking_Bugs https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Tracking_Bugs So it's easy to jump in, if one has a passion to fix interop issues..
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  In my experience, this typically happens if you're using the manual layout systems, nudging and adjusting image sizes and text boxes pixel by pixel until the output is "perfect." This is brittle even in Word. You should be able to insert a section or paragraph without messing up your whole document. Instead, use paragraph breaks, page breaks, and styles to typeset the document. Choose top/bottom wrapping of images, and keep tables simple and clean. It usually looks better, it's easier to edit later, and it just works in whatever editor you're using - whether Office 97, Office 2017, Google Docs, or exporting to HTML.
  - Dayshine 10y ago
    I can't control what others do in the documents they send me...
- oever 10y ago
  The problem with Word is that it has terrible LibreOffice compatibility.
  - thatguy0900 10y ago
    And if word were trying to replace libre office, that might be the case.
reitanqild 10y ago
I also love it to the point of having it installed even when I have access to Word. My reason is because I find it much better to clean up other peoples weird formatting (yep, seems some people don't use styles. Or use styles and then go over and fix every heading manually or something.)
Bedon292 10y ago
I have, and at least for my purposes it did not fit the bill. It has been a little while, and maybe they got footnotes working finally, but before they were horrendous. And yes the Zotero plugin is nice. Libre Office is definitely the closest alternative to MS Office, but just not quite there for me. I do recommend it all the time for people who are very lightweight users though.
- daveguy 10y ago
  Have you tried it since version 5.2? Previous versions didn't cut it for me either. This one does. For one, it now has multi-column copy/paste in Calc.
Nomentatus 10y ago
I came back to LibreOffice recently. Hoping not to experience previous problems. It soon bungled a save of one of its own documents causing me hours of work. I expect to go back to Word, sigh.

bradleyjg 10y ago

"2. Academic writing features, like citations, footnotes, and things like that. No alternative I have tried has ever been able to easily do these things, and MS Office has them all built in." There are dozens of things like this for different niches. You need citation tools, someone else couldn't do his job without pivot tables, someone else uses imported shapes in powerpoint ten times a day, and so forth and so on. That's a big reason that I'm skeptical anyone will be "killing" MS office anytime soon.

Bedon292 10y ago
Right, there are so many 'little' things in MS Office, that people use all the time. It is likely that no one person is using all the features, but on any given day all of the features are key to someone's job. And since they have the home field advantage, it will be a long time before anyone can come close to killing it.
- amelius 10y ago
  That's the first time I read that "feature-creep" is actually a good thing :)
  - pacaro 10y ago
    It's complicated! The crazy feature bloat is a real negative for Word, and yet also a huge strength. It's interesting look at documents produced and consumed by different industries to get a real grasp on the variety of use cases Oh, and a legal document written in Word 2.0 an æon ago needs to have every word on the same line, and paginate identically on every subsequent version
  - ghaff 10y ago
    It isn't necessarily. It's perfectly reasonable to have a streamlined product that supports those features that are most commonly used. And to tell someone that wants the other 90% of features that get 10% of the use to go with some other product. On the other hand, if your objective is to build something that does incorporate more or less every feature that people use, then you're going to need a lot of features because so many workflows have specialized requirements in some area.