6 ms·

Unless you're doing something extremely complicated, linking to data outside the Excel file or abusing Excel for a purpose where some other tool would be far be

Unless you're doing something extremely complicated, linking to data outside the Excel file or abusing Excel for a purpose where some other tool would be far better, this interoperability has been provided by open/libre-office and the various mobile office suites (read-only) for many years. Microsoft's attempts at vendor lock-in notwithstanding. This cloudiness is the wrong solution, the right one would be for MS to stop actively sabotaging interoperability.

freehunter 12y ago
Sorry, but OpenOffice (and so on) is lacking in enough places to make it not worth my time. And believe me, I've put a lot of time into trying to make it work. Saving a document in OpenOffice to Dropbox and editing it on Android with Documents to Go or QuickOffice (both of which I've paid for at ~$20 each) and then trying to open it in Office on the school's computers is a recipe for disaster. What's even worse is if I didn't have the time to open it and save it in Word before the assignment was due. The teacher opens it in Word and finds out that OpenOffice saved it with 1.2" margins and Word interprets it as 1.25", or 12pt Arial font that Word thinks is 11pt Helvetica or that picture isn't lined up properly and now an English professor is giving me a zero on the paper because he doesn't know or care what free software means. He just knows I'm the only one in the class that did not follow the instructions he gave. Worse still, out in the real world as a client-facing consultant who uses a RHEL-based laptop for day-to-day work. I keep a VM of Windows 7 running for when I need to submit a document to a client, because there is no way I am taking the chance on Word interpreting an OpenOffice document correctly. Right solution or wrong solution, Microsoft Office is the solution. I have to wonder where people work (and where they went to college) that affords them the luxury of taking a stand on what office suite they use. I would also like to know what open/libre office suite you're using where I can use the same document with the same file format and the same rendering engine on any platform including the web (where the web version is also open/libre). Because honestly I don't think it exists right now, let alone having existed for many years, which makes your entire point moot.
- rifung 12y ago
  The issue is that you have to submit your papers as a Word file. When I was in college we would just turn in a physical paper, so it didn't matter what software we used. I'm surprised they don't let you submit your assignment in PDF form. It's very bizarre to me that you're required to submit your assignment in a format which is only (truly) supported by paid software, as that would require all students buy said software. Certainly you could make the case that they could use the software available in libraries and such, but I see no reason that they wouldn't embrace more equality if not given the opportunity.
  - mikhailt 12y ago
    Why is that an issue? Word is the standard format for this type of submitting papers in and not just educational but at many companies of different sizes as well. There is no other format that works as well as Word, especially with change tracking that works when you're working in a group. When I was in college, we didn't have to pay for anything to get MS products. The college paid for a "MSDN" library that provides students with access to many tools in MS's collection. MSDN is in quotes because that's effectively what it was but I recall it under a different brand for our college. For IT students, we also had free access to all servers and client OSes, Office, Visio, etc etc etc. We never had to pay for anything. This was true for the faculty, they also had free access to everything and that's why they require the students to submit specific formats.
    - _delirium 12y ago
      I had the opposite experience in college. Most of my professors were pretty adamant that submitting .doc or .docx (or .pages or .rtf or .tex) files wasn't acceptable. You were supposed to export whatever your source file was to PDF, and submit that. Especially the case in my CS courses. Word was more common in the humanities courses, but I never had a problem submitting a PDF in those either, it just wasn't required. Besides accommodating profs who don't use Word (the CS dept had a small but vocal minority of Unix graybeards), the other main motivation was to avoid having to deal with version compatibility issues. Opening a document created on one version of Word in another version would often (depending on the version pair) mangle some things, especially references and cross-references. And some files just wouldn't open at all. Things might be better with that now; I haven't had occasion to investigate in a few years. In the 2000s, there was a huge mess with the .doc/.docx transition, as well as compatibility issues between the Windows and Mac versions of Office.

freehunter 12y ago

Sorry, but OpenOffice (and so on) is lacking in enough places to make it not worth my time. And believe me, I've put a lot of time into trying to make it work. Saving a document in OpenOffice to Dropbox and editing it on Android with Documents to Go or QuickOffice (both of which I've paid for at ~$20 each) and then trying to open it in Office on the school's computers is a recipe for disaster. What's even worse is if I didn't have the time to open it and save it in Word before the assignment was due. The teacher opens it in Word and finds out that OpenOffice saved it with 1.2" margins and Word interprets it as 1.25", or 12pt Arial font that Word thinks is 11pt Helvetica or that picture isn't lined up properly and now an English professor is giving me a zero on the paper because he doesn't know or care what free software means. He just knows I'm the only one in the class that did not follow the instructions he gave. Worse still, out in the real world as a client-facing consultant who uses a RHEL-based laptop for day-to-day work. I keep a VM of Windows 7 running for when I need to submit a document to a client, because there is no way I am taking the chance on Word interpreting an OpenOffice document correctly. Right solution or wrong solution, Microsoft Office is the solution. I have to wonder where people work (and where they went to college) that affords them the luxury of taking a stand on what office suite they use. I would also like to know what open/libre office suite you're using where I can use the same document with the same file format and the same rendering engine on any platform including the web (where the web version is also open/libre). Because honestly I don't think it exists right now, let alone having existed for many years, which makes your entire point moot.

rifung 12y ago
The issue is that you have to submit your papers as a Word file. When I was in college we would just turn in a physical paper, so it didn't matter what software we used. I'm surprised they don't let you submit your assignment in PDF form. It's very bizarre to me that you're required to submit your assignment in a format which is only (truly) supported by paid software, as that would require all students buy said software. Certainly you could make the case that they could use the software available in libraries and such, but I see no reason that they wouldn't embrace more equality if not given the opportunity.
- mikhailt 12y ago
  Why is that an issue? Word is the standard format for this type of submitting papers in and not just educational but at many companies of different sizes as well. There is no other format that works as well as Word, especially with change tracking that works when you're working in a group. When I was in college, we didn't have to pay for anything to get MS products. The college paid for a "MSDN" library that provides students with access to many tools in MS's collection. MSDN is in quotes because that's effectively what it was but I recall it under a different brand for our college. For IT students, we also had free access to all servers and client OSes, Office, Visio, etc etc etc. We never had to pay for anything. This was true for the faculty, they also had free access to everything and that's why they require the students to submit specific formats.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    I had the opposite experience in college. Most of my professors were pretty adamant that submitting .doc or .docx (or .pages or .rtf or .tex) files wasn't acceptable. You were supposed to export whatever your source file was to PDF, and submit that. Especially the case in my CS courses. Word was more common in the humanities courses, but I never had a problem submitting a PDF in those either, it just wasn't required. Besides accommodating profs who don't use Word (the CS dept had a small but vocal minority of Unix graybeards), the other main motivation was to avoid having to deal with version compatibility issues. Opening a document created on one version of Word in another version would often (depending on the version pair) mangle some things, especially references and cross-references. And some files just wouldn't open at all. Things might be better with that now; I haven't had occasion to investigate in a few years. In the 2000s, there was a huge mess with the .doc/.docx transition, as well as compatibility issues between the Windows and Mac versions of Office.