5 ms·

How is office better than Google Docs?

njsubedi 7y ago
Works completely offline?
t-writescode 7y ago
For real document creation, Word and Latex are the best out there, bar none. For detailed and powerful spreadsheet use there is nothing that compares to Excel. This coming from someone forced to use Google Sheets at a former company, after having Excel.
zaat 7y ago
Try using bi-directional text, or including equations in Docs. It is practically unusable. Excel is so powerful that people are doing with it stupid things and than their businesses rely on them. That stuff will never work in Docs. Office is a killer product, with extremely rich feature set that works very well. Sadly, there is nothing in the market that even close. It is the main (perhaps only) reason I still have to use a Windows VM.
wgerard 7y ago
FWIW, I don't think it is necessarily. But, a lot of people are forced to use office for various reasons - trying to edit a docx in Docs/Pages/LibreOffice, for example, can be really frustrating for any number of reasons (fonts, margins, etc. all sometimes break spectacularly). So if you're using office quite frequently, windows can be very appealing.
- t-writescode 7y ago
  Not to mention how just plain ugly LibreOffice’s page renderer is. The kerning and spacing and shapes just seem so off all the time.
xnyan 7y ago
Advanced formatting. I could do things in Microsoft office that Google Docs can’t even dream about. As much as it pains me to say it the power of excel is uncomparable, especially for people who can’t program and are never going to learn how.
PeterisP 7y ago
Interoperability. For me, a common use case is to receive a large document from someone using MS Office, make small alterations or comments, and send it back... while being certain that I have not changed anything else (including formatting and layout of included illustrations) that I did not want to change. Neither Google Docs nor OpenOffice currently support that, simply opening and saving a nontrivial Word document changes the layout.
- andrewshadura 7y ago
  OpenOffice doesn't exist anymore, and hasn't for a decade.

Works completely offline?

For real document creation, Word and Latex are the best out there, bar none. For detailed and powerful spreadsheet use there is nothing that compares to Excel. This coming from someone forced to use Google Sheets at a former company, after having Excel.

zaat 7y ago

Try using bi-directional text, or including equations in Docs. It is practically unusable. Excel is so powerful that people are doing with it stupid things and than their businesses rely on them. That stuff will never work in Docs. Office is a killer product, with extremely rich feature set that works very well. Sadly, there is nothing in the market that even close. It is the main (perhaps only) reason I still have to use a Windows VM.

wgerard 7y ago

FWIW, I don't think it is necessarily. But, a lot of people are forced to use office for various reasons - trying to edit a docx in Docs/Pages/LibreOffice, for example, can be really frustrating for any number of reasons (fonts, margins, etc. all sometimes break spectacularly). So if you're using office quite frequently, windows can be very appealing.

t-writescode 7y ago
Not to mention how just plain ugly LibreOffice’s page renderer is. The kerning and spacing and shapes just seem so off all the time.

xnyan 7y ago

Advanced formatting. I could do things in Microsoft office that Google Docs can’t even dream about. As much as it pains me to say it the power of excel is uncomparable, especially for people who can’t program and are never going to learn how.

PeterisP 7y ago

Interoperability. For me, a common use case is to receive a large document from someone using MS Office, make small alterations or comments, and send it back... while being certain that I have not changed anything else (including formatting and layout of included illustrations) that I did not want to change. Neither Google Docs nor OpenOffice currently support that, simply opening and saving a nontrivial Word document changes the layout.

andrewshadura 7y ago
OpenOffice doesn't exist anymore, and hasn't for a decade.