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Libre calc is very lacking, compared to Excel. Same with Base - Access. No Outlook alternative at all. No cloud integration. With office365 you get Sharepoint A

Libre calc is very lacking, compared to Excel. Same with Base - Access. No Outlook alternative at all. No cloud integration. With office365 you get Sharepoint AND Exchange servers.

melling 12y ago
I'm sure Excel does more. My question was what features do people miss. Cloud integration is the new buzzword. A few years ago, no one cared. It's not a deal breaker for me. Most people don't use Access.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  In 10 years (since 2004), over 400-600 users, I've seen exactly one instance of Access in use, and that was by a developer (not a casual user) who had been using it prior to 2004. On the flipside, Excel and Word are so prevalent that they've now become the default "operating system" - window/OS X are secondary to those two apps.
  - jabits 12y ago
    I have clients in the health insurance industry that use Access all the time. These are not devs, but rather business analysts. Datasets become to much for Excel, and many learn basic sql.
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    My wife is a financial director. Her team uses Access all of the time to aggregate different sources of data together, including some legacy systems. A couple of the senior people write queries and import routines, and the clerks/etc use them in their workflow. Works great.
- MortenK 12y ago
  Most users probably don't miss features in LO as such. The issue like with much open source software, is UI and stability related. Joe Marketing ain't going to jump through UI hoops and do complex bug work-arounds, when he can avoid this entirely by buying a MS office license for 200 USD or whatever the price is.
jayfehr 12y ago
No you do not get Sharepoint AND Exchange servers with Office365. Sure you can access them, but that's not what you said. Also, Calc has Python (and other language scripting) which puts it above Excel in my book. For built in functions yes Excel is better. As soon as you start venturing outside of Spreadsheets and into data analysis (where Macro's come into play) stop using Excel. Move to Matlab or Pandas. Excel Macro's should not be used as a selling point, they are rarely, if ever, the right tool for the job. At least with Calc you can take the business logic from your Macro's and move them into a real script. VBA isn't C# nor VB.Net compatable.
- blumkvist 12y ago
  There are a plethora of plugins to do monte-carlo simulations, linear programming, statistical models and anything else a business user would do in the data analysis world. Vendors include SAS, Oracle, IBM, Predixion. Also Excel is used as a self-service BI tool. It has ETL, OLAP and dynamic dashobarding.
  - jayfehr 12y ago
    My first job out of college was converting all the Excel spreadsheets that ran the business to web apps so I certainly know how they are used, and more importantly, how they are abused. If Excel had a real scripting language as it's Macro language the problem wouldn't be nearly so bad. All that business code could just be copy/pasted, have some unit tests implemented then refactored so that the accountants code is now updated by the developer. As it is now the code has to completely rewritten in a new language. As for the language choice, VB.Net or C# would be fine. I'm not saying it has to be Python. My complaint is that the code is non-transferrable. The apps cannot grow past Excel, and the email the most recent version to the next guy game gets you into versioning hell rather quickly.
    - blumkvist 12y ago
      But you're a developer. A sales manager (for example) couldn't care less about your objections. He wants his pivot tables, KPIs and Solver and some macros. He wants point-and-click ETL. If it's a department/cross-department model, do it in SQL Server, or whatever else you use. You can use your IT kung-fu there. This is about what libre office lacks. Excel has power and flexibility and remains easy to use for non-programmers.
vetinari 12y ago
For most companies, the "no cloud integration" is a plus. Their people are supposed to store their files on internal servers, not in some cloud.

Libre calc is very lacking, compared to Excel. Same with Base - Access. No Outlook alternative at all. No cloud integration. With office365 you get Sharepoint AND Exchange servers.

melling 12y ago

I'm sure Excel does more. My question was what features do people miss. Cloud integration is the new buzzword. A few years ago, no one cared. It's not a deal breaker for me. Most people don't use Access.

ghshephard 12y ago
In 10 years (since 2004), over 400-600 users, I've seen exactly one instance of Access in use, and that was by a developer (not a casual user) who had been using it prior to 2004. On the flipside, Excel and Word are so prevalent that they've now become the default "operating system" - window/OS X are secondary to those two apps.
- jabits 12y ago
  I have clients in the health insurance industry that use Access all the time. These are not devs, but rather business analysts. Datasets become to much for Excel, and many learn basic sql.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  My wife is a financial director. Her team uses Access all of the time to aggregate different sources of data together, including some legacy systems. A couple of the senior people write queries and import routines, and the clerks/etc use them in their workflow. Works great.
MortenK 12y ago
Most users probably don't miss features in LO as such. The issue like with much open source software, is UI and stability related. Joe Marketing ain't going to jump through UI hoops and do complex bug work-arounds, when he can avoid this entirely by buying a MS office license for 200 USD or whatever the price is.

jayfehr 12y ago

No you do not get Sharepoint AND Exchange servers with Office365. Sure you can access them, but that's not what you said. Also, Calc has Python (and other language scripting) which puts it above Excel in my book. For built in functions yes Excel is better. As soon as you start venturing outside of Spreadsheets and into data analysis (where Macro's come into play) stop using Excel. Move to Matlab or Pandas. Excel Macro's should not be used as a selling point, they are rarely, if ever, the right tool for the job. At least with Calc you can take the business logic from your Macro's and move them into a real script. VBA isn't C# nor VB.Net compatable.

blumkvist 12y ago
There are a plethora of plugins to do monte-carlo simulations, linear programming, statistical models and anything else a business user would do in the data analysis world. Vendors include SAS, Oracle, IBM, Predixion. Also Excel is used as a self-service BI tool. It has ETL, OLAP and dynamic dashobarding.
- jayfehr 12y ago
  My first job out of college was converting all the Excel spreadsheets that ran the business to web apps so I certainly know how they are used, and more importantly, how they are abused. If Excel had a real scripting language as it's Macro language the problem wouldn't be nearly so bad. All that business code could just be copy/pasted, have some unit tests implemented then refactored so that the accountants code is now updated by the developer. As it is now the code has to completely rewritten in a new language. As for the language choice, VB.Net or C# would be fine. I'm not saying it has to be Python. My complaint is that the code is non-transferrable. The apps cannot grow past Excel, and the email the most recent version to the next guy game gets you into versioning hell rather quickly.
  - blumkvist 12y ago
    But you're a developer. A sales manager (for example) couldn't care less about your objections. He wants his pivot tables, KPIs and Solver and some macros. He wants point-and-click ETL. If it's a department/cross-department model, do it in SQL Server, or whatever else you use. You can use your IT kung-fu there. This is about what libre office lacks. Excel has power and flexibility and remains easy to use for non-programmers.

vetinari 12y ago

For most companies, the "no cloud integration" is a plus. Their people are supposed to store their files on internal servers, not in some cloud.