4 ms·

I can barely tell the difference between Excel and LibreOffice Calc with both of them open on the same computer...

by larrik 6y ago

larrik 6y ago
I'm getting downvoted, but the fact is that up until like 10 years ago I vastly preferred Calc over Excel. It had a lot less stupid built in causing me to lose my work. Excel would clear my undo history on save, or close ALL worksheets when I tried to close one (completely different behavior than Word) and I would miss which file it was warning me about.
dogma1138 6y ago
Then you haven’t really used excel beyond loading a CSV into a table.
MegaDeKay 6y ago
"Then you haven’t really used excel beyond loading a CSV into a table." Bad example. I've brought LibreOffice to its knees after importing a CSV file: went to adjust a column width and it became non-responsive. And this was within the last year. They have done a lot of performance work on LibreOffice and I appreciate that, but it is a long way away from Excel for serious work. My favorite snag was on a plot with the X-axis labeled with date text at an angle. I could have horribly aliased ugly fast text, or I could have nicely anti-aliased text that slowed moving around in the sheet to a crawl. But I couldn't have nice text on a spreadsheet I could still work in.
- vetinari 6y ago
  Also bad example. I've crashed Excel (2016 for Mac) trying to preview CSV I was about to import. To Microsoft's credit, they eventually fixed it. What still doesn't work (in Mac version) is ODBC driver for Postgresql (and maybe for other databases; it is shipped with MSSQL driver only). It will also crash Excel. So to work with psql data I have to export them into file and then import into Excel. I cannot have a query saved in the spreadsheet and just refresh it.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  > but it is a long way away from Excel for serious work. Most people don't use Excel for "serious work". Most people use Excel to make colorful grids of text and some calculated numbers that fit in a common corporate issue 8GB computer.

I can barely tell the difference between Excel and LibreOffice Calc with both of them open on the same computer...

by larrik 6y ago

I can barely tell the difference between Excel and LibreOffice Calc with both of them open on the same computer...

I'm getting downvoted, but the fact is that up until like 10 years ago I vastly preferred Calc over Excel. It had a lot less stupid built in causing me to lose my work. Excel would clear my undo history on save, or close ALL worksheets when I tried to close one (completely different behavior than Word) and I would miss which file it was warning me about.

dogma1138 6y ago

Then you haven’t really used excel beyond loading a CSV into a table.

MegaDeKay 6y ago

"Then you haven’t really used excel beyond loading a CSV into a table." Bad example. I've brought LibreOffice to its knees after importing a CSV file: went to adjust a column width and it became non-responsive. And this was within the last year. They have done a lot of performance work on LibreOffice and I appreciate that, but it is a long way away from Excel for serious work. My favorite snag was on a plot with the X-axis labeled with date text at an angle. I could have horribly aliased ugly fast text, or I could have nicely anti-aliased text that slowed moving around in the sheet to a crawl. But I couldn't have nice text on a spreadsheet I could still work in.

vetinari 6y ago
Also bad example. I've crashed Excel (2016 for Mac) trying to preview CSV I was about to import. To Microsoft's credit, they eventually fixed it. What still doesn't work (in Mac version) is ODBC driver for Postgresql (and maybe for other databases; it is shipped with MSSQL driver only). It will also crash Excel. So to work with psql data I have to export them into file and then import into Excel. I cannot have a query saved in the spreadsheet and just refresh it.
rbanffy 6y ago
> but it is a long way away from Excel for serious work. Most people don't use Excel for "serious work". Most people use Excel to make colorful grids of text and some calculated numbers that fit in a common corporate issue 8GB computer.