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I’ve only ever used Libre(open) Office Calc since I’ve never paid for or bothered to pirate office before. What can Excel do that Calc can’t? I’ve never done

I’ve only ever used Libre(open) Office Calc since I’ve never paid for or bothered to pirate office before. What can Excel do that Calc can’t? I’ve never done anything crazy heavy with it, but functions and stuff work fine for me I guess.

baq 2y ago
I’ve used Excel and Calc and the short answer is ‘everything’. Excel is faster, more reliable and has a much bigger community. Calc is ok if you want to work with small spreadsheets and don’t care about the occasional bug.
- nocman 2y ago
  not the parent, but 'everything' is a mostly unhelpful answer. A few important concrete examples would be much more interesting. In fairness, you did somewhat, but I would be interested in some more details.
  - baq 2y ago
    I mean this literally: Everything you can do in Calc, Excel is better at in either UX or performance, usually both. Even typing formulas in cells is snappier in Excel.
  - Cordiali 2y ago
    A very basic example, Calc doesn't have tables. That's enough for me to not want to use it, but there are probably a dozen of those for me.
  - max51 2y ago
    It's like asking what are the differences between Visual Studio and Notepad++. Literally >90% of the tools in Excel don't exist in Calc. And there are big ones in the list (eg. pivot table, vba macros, solver), not just small feature..
AnonC 2y ago
I use Calc on my personal machine. > What can Excel do that Calc can’t? For one, a working copy paste. Seriously, I’ve lived with a copy paste bug in LibreOffice Calc (Windows) for years (it wasn’t yet fixed as of a few months ago). It will either paste an older copy or not paste anything even though I just hit Ctrl+C (sometimes multiple times) within Calc. This is one of the most irritating things about Calc. Fonts and formatting is another thing that Calc miserably fails at in relation to copy paste. Multiple cells will look very different even though the font, size, etc., will appear the same in the dropdowns below the menus (when these cells are in focus). LibreOffice Calc, in many ways, portrays the worst of what one would expect from an open source project (I say this as a supporter/donor of Document Foundation). The other part about what Excel can do that Calc can’t is that Microsoft (at least with the MS365 subscription version) has been adding more functions to improve older functions and features. I don’t remember everything, but SEQUENCE and XLOOKUP are two functions that come to mind on this aspect. LibreOffice Calc lags behind Excel on functions by several years. LibreOffice Calc, though it’s a lot newer/younger than Excel, also has ~weird~ different keyboard shortcuts compared to Excel (e.g. adding a new line within a cell is Ctrl+Enter whereas it’s Alt+Enter in Excel; there are many more like this). Nevertheless, I use Calc because I can’t bother to pay Microsoft and since Excel might be the only application that could be of value to me in its Office offerings (MS Word is total crap, PowerPoint isn’t as keyboard friendly as I’d like it to be, and Outlook is another total piece of crap).
- timbit42 2y ago
  I use LibreOffice on Linux and don't have any copy/paste or fonts and formatting issues like you are describing. I wouldn't be surprised if such bugs get fixed more quickly on Linux because Linux users don't have an easy way to use Excel, while the vast majority of Windows users do use Excel so there are fewer LibreOffice for Windows users complaining. Excel does have more functions but 90% of people don't need those. If you do, you do.
- copperx 2y ago
  Excel also has that program synthesis algorithm to fill cells following a pattern. I haven't seen it anywhere else.
BobaFloutist 2y ago
FWIW, a permanent 1-machine Excel-only license key is pretty affordable on G2A et al.

baq 2y ago

I’ve used Excel and Calc and the short answer is ‘everything’. Excel is faster, more reliable and has a much bigger community. Calc is ok if you want to work with small spreadsheets and don’t care about the occasional bug.

nocman 2y ago
not the parent, but 'everything' is a mostly unhelpful answer. A few important concrete examples would be much more interesting. In fairness, you did somewhat, but I would be interested in some more details.
- baq 2y ago
  I mean this literally: Everything you can do in Calc, Excel is better at in either UX or performance, usually both. Even typing formulas in cells is snappier in Excel.
- Cordiali 2y ago
  A very basic example, Calc doesn't have tables. That's enough for me to not want to use it, but there are probably a dozen of those for me.
- max51 2y ago
  It's like asking what are the differences between Visual Studio and Notepad++. Literally >90% of the tools in Excel don't exist in Calc. And there are big ones in the list (eg. pivot table, vba macros, solver), not just small feature..

AnonC 2y ago

I use Calc on my personal machine. > What can Excel do that Calc can’t? For one, a working copy paste. Seriously, I’ve lived with a copy paste bug in LibreOffice Calc (Windows) for years (it wasn’t yet fixed as of a few months ago). It will either paste an older copy or not paste anything even though I just hit Ctrl+C (sometimes multiple times) within Calc. This is one of the most irritating things about Calc. Fonts and formatting is another thing that Calc miserably fails at in relation to copy paste. Multiple cells will look very different even though the font, size, etc., will appear the same in the dropdowns below the menus (when these cells are in focus). LibreOffice Calc, in many ways, portrays the worst of what one would expect from an open source project (I say this as a supporter/donor of Document Foundation). The other part about what Excel can do that Calc can’t is that Microsoft (at least with the MS365 subscription version) has been adding more functions to improve older functions and features. I don’t remember everything, but SEQUENCE and XLOOKUP are two functions that come to mind on this aspect. LibreOffice Calc lags behind Excel on functions by several years. LibreOffice Calc, though it’s a lot newer/younger than Excel, also has ~weird~ different keyboard shortcuts compared to Excel (e.g. adding a new line within a cell is Ctrl+Enter whereas it’s Alt+Enter in Excel; there are many more like this). Nevertheless, I use Calc because I can’t bother to pay Microsoft and since Excel might be the only application that could be of value to me in its Office offerings (MS Word is total crap, PowerPoint isn’t as keyboard friendly as I’d like it to be, and Outlook is another total piece of crap).

timbit42 2y ago
I use LibreOffice on Linux and don't have any copy/paste or fonts and formatting issues like you are describing. I wouldn't be surprised if such bugs get fixed more quickly on Linux because Linux users don't have an easy way to use Excel, while the vast majority of Windows users do use Excel so there are fewer LibreOffice for Windows users complaining. Excel does have more functions but 90% of people don't need those. If you do, you do.
copperx 2y ago
Excel also has that program synthesis algorithm to fill cells following a pattern. I haven't seen it anywhere else.

BobaFloutist 2y ago

FWIW, a permanent 1-machine Excel-only license key is pretty affordable on G2A et al.