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Excel is ahead of LibreOffice and others by laps. Just take a *.csv file and try importing it into LibreOffice and into Excel (with Power Query) and see how man
by mopsi 3y ago
Excel is ahead of LibreOffice and others by laps. Just take a *.csv file and try importing it into LibreOffice and into Excel (with Power Query) and see how many additional processing options you are offered to format, interpret and transform the data. Next to Excel, CSV importing in LibreOffice is very barebones and not much better than a primitive example found in a programming tutorial.
Screenshots tell the difference rather nicely:
https://ift.wiki.uib.no/images/7/71/Csv_import_libreoffice.png https://ift.wiki.uib.no/images/7/71/Csv_import_libreoffice.p... (LibreOffice)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/media/power-query-ui/pqui-user-interface.png https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/media/power-qu... (Excel)
And even there, Excel tucks away a ton of functionality behind tabs and submenus: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/power-query-ui https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/power-query-ui
Most people who say that Google Docs or other alternatives are good enough, or that they can program what they need in Python, barely scratch the surface of what Excel offers out of the box with little effort once you've mastered its concepts and workflows. It's like doing version management with "final_report_draft_v2_final (copy 2).txt". Might work for most people, but git offers so much more for those who know how to use it. Excel is the git of the business world.
- kbolino 3y agoIt has been a few years, but the last time I tried importing CSVs into both programs, LibreOffice had a much lower chance of mangling the data. Excel loves to be "helpful" which often resulted in turning lots of things that aren't dates into dates.
- everybodyknows 3y agoThe filtering operations shown on the Excel screenshot seem like they might equally well be done after the import step, as in LibreOffice. That way, the user only has to maintain familiarity with navigation of a single GUI for filtering tasks.