3 ms·
We need a real competitor to google docs, especially the spreadsheets.
by niggler 14y ago
We need a real competitor to google docs, especially the spreadsheets.
- eckyptang 14y agoThere is one: Excel (Live) or Excel (Desktop). Try it if you haven't already by creating a Windows Live account and visiting http://skydrive.live.com http://skydrive.live.com and clicking the Create button at the top. You can do Word, OneNote, Excel and PowerPoint.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- gruseom 14y agoespecially the spreadsheets Can you expand on that? (I work in this space.)
- ensignavenger 14y agoGoogles ability to copy formulas across cells and automatically adjust them relative to their new postion is weak compared to Excel. Basic patterns work, but if you are doing anything complex, Google just doesn't do it. Also, Google's formating possiblities are very limited compared to Excels. I run into this limitation frequently. There are numerous other restraints I come up against with Google Sheets occasionally, but these 2 are the ones I miss almost every time I use it. I have not spent a lot of time with Excel Live, so I am not sure how well it competes.
- gruseom 14y agoIf you have any examples handy of the kinds of formula copying or formatting you're talking about, I'd love to hear them.
- brc 14y agoConditional formatting in Google Spreadsheets is hopeless to the point of not being worth trying. It needs to work on a cell by cell basis, not just column/row. And you need to be able to overload cells with more than one rule.
- eckyptang 14y agoThis kills it for me as well. Also it's incredibly slow and glitchy even on Chrome. Considering Office costs me less than 10GBP a month over 3 years, and works entirely offline, Google docs doesn't cut it.
- dredmorbius 14y agoLibreOffice. It's old-school local app though, not cloud. There are several other Free Software tools that will provide spreadsheet compatibility, Gnumeric being among my favorite. Also the KDE office suite, KOffice.
- eckyptang 14y agoI'd like LibreOffice if it wasn't so clunky. It's entirely lacking polish and quality control. It has potential, but it's not there yet.
- dredmorbius 14y agoI'll admit I pretty much only use it when I must for comparability. Otherwise my preference is plain text (vim) over word processors, awk for Excel, with lighter utilities (abiword, numeric, koffice) or specialized tool (lyx) standing in for more specific tasks.
- eckyptang 14y agoTo be honest, I too used the same toolset as you for a long time, but since Office 2007, it's just not been worth it for me. I have to share a lot of documents and information with people who don't understand the UNIX tools so it's not practical.
- niggler 14y agoI'd like to have a longer discussion on the topic with you. Check my user info and shoot me an email :)
- fafner 14y agoThey are working on a Web version called LibreOffice Online. I don't know the current state. But last year they already showed a quick demo.
- 14y ago