Make LIBREOFFICE more compatible with MICROSOFT OFFICE & 365

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Download Safing's Portmaster and take control of your network traffic: safing.io

[@MBrieger]

Nick, maybe at some point you could elaborate on the whole Database Integration, especially the driver setup and where to get them with a nice Document. I remember that when I started, I had headaches for weeks. I still don't know why to take the route via the Database application. Maybe I haven't figured that out.

[@currentsubset6885]

Portmaster’s pretty cool, Spotify has like 3k connections and it blocks 90% of them.

[@FrancoisSchnell]

The theme option is for 7.4 (Linux Mint 21 has 7.3). Just installed the appimage 7.4 and works well now.

[@csehszlovakze]

Nick! The stupid ribbon interface was *the* reason why I switched to LibreOffice long before I moved to linux! Why would you wish that ugly thing on the rest of us?

[@WohaoG]

Little tip for next time you make a video that could potentially be used on windows as well Instead of C:\Users\Username\Appdata\Roaming just type %APPDATA% And instead of Instead of C:\Users\Username\Appdata\Local just type %LocalAppdata%

[@Blueeeeeee]

Wow, I didn't even know LO had extensions. This video is 100% much more useful than most LO configuration videos out there.

[@afriquelesud]

I have as always loved using extensions.

[@mirage809]

Some handy tips. I've been using LibreOffice for years now. Partly because by the time I got my hands on MS Office I had gotten so used to Libre's UI that everything else just feels weird to me now. It's still a piece of software I happily recommend to anyone who needs to get work done.

[@brostoevsky22]

I feel weird in MS Office now as well. I'll add the MS fonts and change the ribbon layout. LibreOffice Calc is the tool that needs the most work. Writer is perfectly fine as is.

[@cdoublejj]

i still have old fogies who hate it and i wish i had seen this video first, they want the office they know, sometimes with the EXACT buttons. i've compared office 2013 and office 2016 on to laptops side by side with the EXACT same UI and because it 2016 was a slightly darker shade of grade it broke thier brain.

[@thechargedcreeper3967]

This video came at the perfect time for me. I'm slowly trying to transition to Linux, and currently that involves switching away from closed source applications to open source cross platform ones. Office was the big hurdle for me because a. LibreOffice's layout was way to confusing with the little muscle memory I have, b. it sometimes didn't seem to correctly display math formulas saved in Word as an odt, c. the default template feeling ever so slightly off and d. Word doesn't like it when I save an odt with Windows Ink content, the 'drawing area' should be converted to an image but everything is all over the place. The last problem is Word's fault and at this point I'm using Paint to quickly make those sketches, but knowing that LibreOffice has even more extensive toolbar customization and knowing that it can convert certain Office-features for you (and that I should change the default way Word interprets math thanks to that compatibility table), I'm one step closer to ditching Office and one step closer to going full Linux. Thank you for the video man

[@louistournas120]

On Linux, the replacement for Paint is KolourPaint.

[@riccardogilblas]

If you need to use math formulas on a regular base, I suggest you to use LaTeX instead.

[@Powerincarnate.]

OR... you can just stick to industry standard and stick with Office. Listen, sometimes these youtubers who are not in touch with the real world, often without non-youtube jobs tend to forget these things. It is just not ok to work in any serious business (or if in college, graduate school, professional schools like Law, Medicine) to be risk major compatibility issue, and also expect your colleagues to some how also be ok with your FOSS software. At best, maybe go with Only Office; but otherwise stick to Microsoft Office.

[@riccardogilblas]

@@Powerincarnate. Most of the critic points the guy above (@The ChargedCreeper) noticed are easily fixable by setting some configs and adapting to a different UI. The only really limitating one is the problem with math formulas, which LibreOffice is not good at, just as MS Office. That's why I suggested LaTeX, which is the standard for math. I think no one forces you to use FOSS software, neither I can see why some colleagues would pretend you to pay some hundreds euro for the MSOffice license, while you can do essentially the same job (and also work on MS formats) with FOSS. As far as I know, using LibreOffice (or other FOSS) you do not risk any "major compatibility issues" with MSOffice software, whichever your business is.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Just a note that it’s not “Microsoft Office” any more, it’s all been rebranded as “Microsoft 365”. Which is kind of amusing, since I think Microsoft has yet to manage 365 days in a row without an outage.

[@adithyasunil8809]

The video we all needed, to help out new Linux users.

[@doriankandi2695]

My guy, thanks for putting this together. Most of LibreOffice/Excel tutorials stop after adding a ribbon/fonts. Thanks for the extra detail here. My job in finance keeps me tied to Excel, and OnlyOffice isn't as robust (no SOLVER) as LibreOffice. Here's to reinstalling Linux and trying this out!

[@averagemamil4523]

+1 for Libre Office from me - use it all the time and rarely have interoperability problems with my MS work buddies. Will definitely add some of the tweaks you showed - thanks Nick! 👏

[@CorvusSolitario]

I needed this, thank you for sharing. It's easy to get lost in all the menus and features when you deal with hundreds of programs daily, and having someone show you how to make your life (and the others you work for) just a bit easier is appreciated.

[@lucymorrison]

Happy birthday Nick! Also, as someone switching to LibreOffice from iWork and MS Office, this was super helpful.

[@Watchandlearn91]

Your videos are awesome and you are one of the only channels I still watch on KZbin. Thanks for all your effort! I really wish that Libreoffice would enable a lot of this by default as when some users download and install it, they will be immediately shocked by the user interface and find an alternative like only office.

[@genkiferal7178]

another group or dev would have to offer a separate package for this so that LibreOffice didn't get sued for copywrite infringement, though

[@manu55pool]

Thanks for the video but I think I need to look for an office key because for some reason it's not working correctly for me.

[@yavuzs7]

It may help you. It may be one of the many options, but I think it is worth trying.

[@Melissalove44]

I used BNH Software for mine and I feel that it may be a good option to take into account.

[@indiboy7]

I recently swithed from MS office to LO, just saw this video and all my doubts cleared in one single place. Thank you👍

[@jeanmarccourtiade]

Nice video, thanks. I've been working with LibreOffice for a couple of years and do all my consulting work with it from reports, to presentations and data analysis (that even Excel cannot handle). Yet, this video has taught me a few things. Well done!

[@cejannuzi]

I use WPS, Libre, and OnlyOffice. Due to its Chinese roots, WPS is the best for multi-lingual word processing in Asian languages. The Japanese functions really well. Thanks for the advice on Libre.

[@user8921]

Thank You so much for this one, I got really tired using office online for friends and libreoffice for my own stuff, this video probably fixed most of my issues with libreoffice compatibility, actually I never digged into settings.

[@louisc6966]

Thank you for another super-helpful video. Great to see that you have covered one of the most important issues for those looking to switch to Linux. Having grown up with Microsoft Office (on PC and Mac), I was concerned about its perceived stranglehold as it does not run on Linux. I now feel more confident that switching to Linux will not isolate me from those using Microsoft Office on other operating systems.

[@Ragnar8504]

In most cases it's now better than sharing files between MS Office Windows and Mac used to be a while ago. I haven't tried any really complex formatting like automatic numbering, table of contents, etc. in Libre Office in a long time and hopefully won't have to anytime soon (it wasn't a part of my studies I particularly enjoyed and my job doesn't involve any of that).

[@RedBoyforCE]

I like the new transitions you are using! Really modern in my oppinion. Also, OnlyOffice ftw

[@genkiferal7178]

Another guy insinuated that OnlyOffice is more like MS Office. Do you agree? NextCloud uses OnlyOffice, but most people say OnlyOffice isn't as feature-rich as LibreOffice. Just curious.

[@user-tc9tb3a]

​@@genkiferal7178 Onlyoffice is less customizable and doesn't have desktop theme integration. I have also heard it's related to Russia. But it has better compatibility with Microsoft

[@genkiferal7178]

@@user-tc9tb3a thanks. Slava rodu. Russia is not the enemy - globalists are. Zelenskyy is a globalist, the enemy within.

[@mar-tin702]

Ah the Russian spy on your pc ,nice

[@agoniavr]

Very nice video, I love LibreOffice and use it even on my Win11 and MacOS computers! The only thing I don't like on these two OS's is that dark mode isn't yet implemented as well as on Linux...you have to enable Experimental Features from the Advanced menu, restart the program and then it's sorta dark mode but you still have to tweak a couple things and it doesn't look 100% complete and integrated with the system. On Linux no matter the distro, it just works and is coherent.

[@nohypocrisy]

the mind, the soul, idea, intent, reason, fear, ignorance, health, dream

[@albertbacker7751]

Extra thanks for this useful video with tips I was not aware of.

[@balesjo]

It's been quite a while since I looked at LibreOffice and your video really impressed me with how far the office suite has come.

[@negilchi]

Videos like this and channel like this must be watched by everyone. And only then people can see Linux as user friendly and not frightening as they think.

[@TS-fh4un]

参考になりました。アリガトウゴザイマス。LibreOffice日本語では縦書き、日本の暦も使えるので、とても有益です。LibreOffice日本の開発者たちに感謝しています。ファイル形式はODFで統一することができる場合は極力ODFにしています。いざというときはPDFで出力をすれば最低限閲覧だけでもできるので、たいていの場合は何とかなっています。

[@IoanEugenStan]

Thank you for all the work you are doing to make open source software more popular.

[@Roxor128]

I stopped pirating Microsoft Office ages ago, switching to OpenOffice at the time, and LibreOffice some years down the line when I found that was a fork of the former that was getting more updates. It's probably been at least 15 years since I last used Microsoft Office at all. I think I may have even made the move before they brought in the ribbon UI that was so widely reviled by those stuck using it at the time.

[@marianobarella3191]

For budget reasons these days Ive been distro hopping and finally staying in MX Linux, and this video was very helpful to customize LibreOffice, thank you so much! New subscriber here

[@cautionglassllc]

I just use OnlyOffice! I LOVE it! Only had a slight issue with page sizes on PDF export for spreadsheets. Otherwise it's been flawless and feels very high end

[@genkiferal7178]

Does OnlyOffice looks and feel more like MS Office/365?

[@cautionglassllc]

@@genkiferal7178 Far more in my opinion.

[@jeancorriveau8686]

This is the best guide for compatibility with MS Office I have seen!

[@robh5695]

I'm new to Linux, and this video is super helpful. Thank you!

[@knghtbrd]

LibreOffice can also do a fair job emulating the sidebar interface style found in Apple's office suite, and I recommend trying it. It's missing a few features-for example POSITION and Size doesn't let you set the position. It's literally in the name, but LibreOffice doesn't do it. You have to open a stupid dialog box for that. Even so, the sidebar is really good if you have a wide display (and at this point we all do), rather than the ribbon designed in the age of 4:3.

[@mr.sidious9163]

Wait, Apple has an office suite?

[@KhoaNguyen-sy6np]

@@mr.sidious9163 Yes. And it's free but not open source. It's called iWork. And it's online version is literally called "iWork for iCloud"...

[@KuruGDI]

I am actually thankful that LibreOffice does not have the ribbon menu by default. I don't like it and the current default suits my workstyle much better. ... but I can understand why people who are used to MS Office want something they already know.

[@Vlad-1986]

Uni student here, in the old side which was a teenager in the late 90s, and Linux only user since 2005. I tried many things as to send the projects and essays without using Windows. As you said, calc compatibility is very bad. We are forced to use calibry light, which doesn't exist in Linux When there are many lists, it always gets messed up. I am lazy and we are forced to use a lot of referencing. As far as I know, only Office 365 allows to just fill the fields and the suite will add the references automagically according to whichever standard you need (Harvard referencing on my case). When I am not using references, I tend to use Office97 on a Win9x VM, because I love the interface there and I hate ribbon, and... Well, clippy for nostalgia and nuissance. If I can I use LibreOffice, and import as pdf as you recommend. For anything else, VM with windows 10 and my student license of Office... I can't wait to wave it all goodbye.

[@AyushSharma-sr6bg]

thank you soo much , i switched to linux few days back and this was the only video i needed

[@nasroml12]

LibreOffice is a great office suite, I like it so much and to me it's mandatory to install it alongside Ms-Office, however, it still needs some tweakings especially when managing non-latin languages

[@jfomega]

Remember when the ribbon interface was forced upon us, it was pretty much universally abhorred. Not using the ribbon interface is a major plus for power users. It is a pity that Steve Ballmer ignored this criticism, he did that with Vista and Windows 8 as well and it finally cost him his job. Unfortunately this happened too late for Office to return to a sane interface, one that has not been slowing down users for 15 years. You should be praising Libre Office where it improves on MS Office and not suggesting ways to nerf it.

[@alperkanat3848]

The timing of this video couldn't be any better! 🙂 Thank you Nick!

[@rautamiekka]

**Never** change away from the native file format by default !!! You'll introduce an ever-worsening irrecoverable corruption through incompatibilities with the foreign format and bugs in the software !! **Always** save in the native file format 1st, *_then_* save **a copy** in the foreign ! I still +liked and added to tuts list.

[@haroldasraz]

This video is a great help for someone moving over from MS Office to LibreOffice.

[@NeverlandSystemZor]

I have used OpenOffice for YEARS and loved it- mostly b/c MS Office was so inaccessibly expensive for me... and I moved to LibreOffice about a year ago and it's amazing. I love it. I use it on Linux, Mac, and Windows. It's great.

[@lgiordanoest]

I'm an old time Linux user, and this video was worth watching. Enlightening, I might say. Thanks!

[@decrobyron]

I tried extensively for personal projects and found out that still MS Excel and Access is better option than their counterparts. I had to go back. Few crucial features (for my project) was missing.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Yeah, if you depend on advanced Excel features, or Access, it’s hard to find a replacement

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Access is a pretty rubbish database. Even SQLite is better than that.

[@eldaria]

Stopped using Libre Office after trying OnlyOffice. Night and Day difference. OK, Libre Office has some more stuff, but if you want good compatibility with Office documents, then nothing beats Only Office as far as I know.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

OnlyOffice is really good, yeah!

[@FengLengshun]

WPS Office? Though last I heard, LO has improved their compatibility by _a lot_ . OnlyOffice still has some issues with PivotTable when I checked early this year, LO handled it better though it still messed with the formatting (but at least it remains interoperable between LO and MSO).

[@IGqy]

I want to use libre office, but use onlynoffice more often as it tends to have better compatibility. If I do something more advanced, I use libre. The absolutely biggest compatibility issue, in my opinion, is that of macros. Macros are really useful and having made quite a lot in ms office, these are the main hindrance for me to switch to libre office along with mobile and sync limitations. Thanks for another great video

[@IGqy]

@Zaydan Alfariz Yes, the backwards compatibility is not perfect, but if you have a whole lot of macros with varying degree of complexity and 80-90% of them works in MS, then it is sadly still more work to move it all to libre.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

If you are using macros, you are doing it wrong. In my own personal workflow, I use custom Python code with the odfpy library to generate invoices in ISO 26300 format from my time & billing database.

[@IGqy]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 Not that I disagree. I don't create macros anymore as I actually use python now, but that doesn't change the fact that I have a big bank of macros that is a lot of work to move over to anything. Some of the macros I made a long time ago, when that was what I could, and some I inherited. In the end, they are still there, they are used and they are a hassle to transfer. My way if doing it so far has been to make a python solution whenever a macro breaks, because then I only have to deal with one at the time and they are prioritized for me ;) I don't really have the opportunity to just set aside a few weeks to transfer everything to something else as there a more pressing tasks to do, so this way, they become my "in between" tasks

[@IGqy]

@Zaydan Alfariz I like R - I am just better at python, so that's what I mostly replace them with when I run into problems :)

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@IGqy It’s just that VBA is just a way of automating operations through the GUI, which is slow and clunky. Yes, moving away from that is a good long-term strategy.

[@cleanthe3276]

Merci pour tous ces conseils Nic :) Je devais justement chercher ces fonctions de compatibilité, tu tombes à pic 👍 Maintenant, il ne reste plus qu'à trouver tous ces paramétrages en francais !😅

[@FengLengshun]

Sounds pretty complicated, not going to lie. That boat has sailed for me, especially as I both work in a very MS Office centric office and does distro-hopping for fun, especially since WPS Office via Flatpak is an option. It's a pain having to set Libreoffice up every time I distro-hop, and it's really not good whenever a co-worker or client sent me a file and when I sent it back some of the colors or formatting is different from what they set (it was really annoying dealing with pivot table and making sure it doesn't mess with either of those). WPS Office just does it better, and yeah, I don't like it either, but it's just the best option on Linux unless you really need the really advanced features like scripting (though it's not like LO is good with MS Office scripts/macros either). I honestly wouldn't use it if it doesn't come in Flatpak where I could just disable network access via Flatseal. But I could, and I did, so I can move on with my work. Office suite and office work is just boring. No matter how much I try, I just don't have the same passion required for going open source with them unlike I do with the OS. So I just want to be done with it and move on, hence giving up and using WPS Office and MS Office via Crossover and TeamViewer.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Nah, it’s like 5 minutes to do all this

[@Daniel_VolumeDown]

Settings can be "exported" and "imported" after quick search (I don't know if it also saves fonts but I guess that it does not).

[@asifshamsi5630]

You forget to mention 1 point that Libre Office Base is not compatible with Microsoft Access or vice versa. You give very nice tips.

[@afriquelesud]

MSO isn't compatible with itself, either. Use FOSS.

[@aytviewer2421]

Nice video. Curiously, my install of LibreOffice on Zorin OS 16.2 already had the tabbed layout set by default. It also already had the Microsoft fonts installed too, but they were not set at the default fonts. Thanks!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Zorin probably applies that customization out of the box!

[@kote315]

Different distributions may have different default settings. This is both a good and a bad thing. The good thing is that you can choose what is right for you. The bad thing is that you never know beforehand what else is configured there. This is the reason why I abandoned custom builds of Windows (in our area they were quite popular at a certain time), and now I prefer more or less mainstream distributions.

[@genkiferal7178]

@@kote315 yeah, It drove me crazy trying to figure that out - to see why Geany in one distro looked and behaved so much better than what I could download on my main distro.

[@jesuisjamaiscontent]

For those of us who have been working on Linux for years the ribbon title bar is just confusing bling, hence I'm happy to keep the standard version.

[@elnicatuani05]

Very useful. Thanks a million for this walktrough, Nick.

[@yammy3739]

If I knew about onlyoffice in my student years, I'll probably should've been able to stick to Linux. Libreoffice at the time didn't had tabed style interface and I constantly had issues where my doc was completely fine on my screen and then completely destroyed when I try to print it in local copy centers. I wish I also knew about save as pdf option too, but either way, that wouldn't fix my experience completely because we used to co-work on the same docs to, and If I shared one or made changes in Libre it always was messed up for others.

[@video-rgb-es]

The ttf-mscorefont package offer almost 20 years old ttf versions of ms fonts, and that means no smart features, different metrics, small glyph coverage and other issues. Since their release, ms changed everything about those fonts:and yes, they did that on purpose. Those old and crappy fonts only share the name with modern times new roman, arial, etc., so it's better to NOT use them. If, to ensure compatibility, you want modern MS fonts, you need to buy said fonts (AFAIK, copying them from a windows installation is illegal).

[@shadamethyst1258]

Oh I hate those fonts. They have an awful bitmap which seems to have been drawn by a toddler

[@joschafinger126]

Using Manjaro, I have both OnlyOffice and LibreOffice. Plus, in my line of work (state school teacher in Spain), I do lots of work using Google's tools. Among the three, for complex work I vastly prefer LibreOffice -especially for my grammar videos (presentations) and graphic design in text-based documents. As for the layout of the applications themselves, let's just say that when MS Office switched to the ribbon layout, that was the exact moment I got rid of it (I was still letting myself be used by Windows then). Can't stand it, and it's why I *only* use OnlyOffice to open *.docx files, which by default it does way better than LibreOffice. Any LibreOffice devs reading this: all my respect and love, and please keep the current default layout.

[@jd31068]

Excellent video, I switched from LibreOffice a few years back to OnlyOffice. I don't require the sheer metric-ton of features LibreOffice has and instead prefer the more MS Office user experience out of the box that OnlyOffice provides.

[@genkiferal7178]

thanks for this comment. that is what I needed to know.

[@michaelmoonbear4456]

This a fantastically useful video. Clear, concise, and I refer to it often. Thank you!

[@paulprobusjr.7597]

Thank you for this, Nick. I wish you would call out LibreOffice's biggest incompatibility with MS Office and that is Calc is not compatible with Excel's Table's that are created via the Ctrl+T shortcut. I understand it is open source and there are only so many contributors, but this has been in Excel since 2007 and is pretty well entrenched by now (i.e. it's not going away). I have tried Only Office (thanks again, to your previous video, Nick) and while it does work with tables created in Excel (did not test the opposite situation) I did not try it out long enough to see if all of the functionalities are there (i.e. when you create a table it automatically creates ranges based on the column headings and data in those columns, not sure if Only Office can work with those), I can use Calc for about 75% of my uses in which I can work around not having the Table functionality, but it's that last 25% that gets me. I can understand newer functions like Xlookup, Unique, etc. not being integrated into Calc yet, but why has the Table functionality not been adopted? Otherwise, I do LOVE LibreOffice, Writer is every bit as good as Word for my uses and is worth the download, alone, to break away from at least one of MS's office products (I rarely use the other apps in the suite).

[@mad_vegan]

Sorry to bear the bad news, but this has been extensively discussed already and they simply won't back down. The LibreOffice team is passionately against implementing this table functionality, which they deem redundant or useless, no matter how many users ask for it.

[@paulprobusjr.7597]

@@mad_vegan I saw that some developers were supportive of it when it came to a potential Google Summer Of Coding suggestion. But that was years ago. It's a shame, if that is their stance, because it holds back Calc, IMHO. I understand they don't want to be just a clone of MS Office, but this hurts compatibility substantially not to mention productivity.

[@quikee9195]

​@@mad_vegan LibreOffice developer here. I don't know anybody who is opposed to implementing this (I checked our bugzilla for what is written there - bug number 132780 for example), quit the opposite - a lot of developers would like to have this in LibreOffice. The problem is that this is a larger feature that needs to change the Calc core, UI and import/export filters and without funding it is hard for anyone to find time to implement it. There are already parts implemented, but mostly to be able to round-trip a xlsx document in LibreOffice and not loose the table data in the process.

[@LV4EVR]

@@quikee9195 👏Kudos for all the great work from all you devs. It's a very impressive suite! Like tons of others, I do hope you'll be able to implement the Table feature soon. It's literally the only thing that keeps me with MS. I also understand the funding situation. That's why it's important that everyone who appreciates and/or uses the software contribute financially, otherwise we're all held hostage to the subscription model. 💲💲💲❗❗❗

[@paulprobusjr.7597]

@@quikee9195 Thank you for the insight. I noticed that the Google Summer of Code proposal indicated 350 hours to accomplish this. That is quite a bit of time to devote, so I understand the cost perspective. Perhaps a Kickstarter can be started and funded by those of us requesting this feature can be used to fund this change?

[@TheodorosKosmidis]

been using libre office years now. works wonders

[@sm_stormzy1075]

Wow thanks I literally needed this for the first time for homework

[@OmairSadiqPanchili]

@TheLinuxExperiment Nick!! Can you or somebody pls tell which distro is he using and also the browser shown? it looks so sleek and awesome..want to use it badly...

[@RetosSpace]

Banging Video, tons of learning points, Brilliant..."Make Libre Office Great Again"!! Thanks Nic

[@vanodon2257]

I much prefer onlyoffice cant lie.

[@paerbac]

Onlyoffice is great, but its sheets have wayyyy less functions and statistical analysis options compared to libre or ms office, not to mention it doesn't adhere to gtk or qt theming at all. Once it fixes these issues, I will gladly use it full-time

[@omegadomega]

I prefer it because it doesnt look ugly

[@darukutsu]

Bro libreoffice looks is beautiful. Immediately I know where what is. Unlike microsoft. But when I first switched I disliked it a lot because I was used to Microsoft.

[@dand337]

@@darukutsu in my opinion Libreoffice is the worst looking office app ever. Not only the UI is ugly, but the layout itself looks very complex. In comparison WPS / only office or Microsoft everythig is clean, well spaced out and easy to use.

[@_ariadna]

@@dand337 you literally can change it :D

[@ninjanerdstudent6937]

I like Libre Office even more now.

[@taputechnic]

As an academic, Impress is the least Microsoft-compatible program from the big three in LibreOffice. I expect some vector objects to move themselves after re-opening the slideshow, and I've never been able to embed movies in a way that they remain after re-opening the file. I may try OnlyOffice, and a colleague has shown me that it's possible to use Google Docs as a Powerpoint substitute. I should add that an important extension in LibreOffice (Writer) is the reference manager, Zotero. I've changed reference managers twice already over the years, and have thus needed to re-import my citations, and I'm hoping Zotero will have some staying power.

[@JauStudioFR]

On Arch based distros, you can use the AUR ttf-ms-win11-auto to have up-to-date Microsoft fonts.

[@9a3eedi]

For me, I just use Only Office for ms office formats, which people send to me. But if I create a new document for myself, I use ODF with libreoffice as it has more features.

[@snoobab_86]

I did not know about the tabbed UI. Thanks a million for that!

[@octogintillion]

HOW do you get it to look nice and modern like that instead of the outdated design like the standard libreoffice?

[@Mantikal]

There is a 3rd party software that I use for mass mailings (there's a lot of them out there) that checks on the accuracy of all the addresses in your excel file mailing lists and corrects them. Anyway, When I import an excel list into Libre Office to work on, everything goes fine. If I import that Libre Office exported excel file into excel, everything goes fine. However, if I export from Libre office to an excel file and then import that excel file into the mass mailing software, it will say that there's a ridiculous amount of records in the file. Ex. If there are actually 300 addresses in the excel file, the mass mailing software will say that there are 2 million addresses. When you use the "preview file" option in the mass-mailing software, you'll find that all those extra record lines are blank. So, there's some sort of corruption of background data that happens in the conversion to a MS Excel file from Libre Office. In order to fix this problem, one would have to import that corrupted file into excel and export it as a new excel file, then import that into the mass-mailing program.

[@vishalkumar040393]

Thanks, I learned several new things. Particularly, about the wonderful extensions.

[@stevethepocket]

I started trying FreeOffice after hearing you mention it in your Manjaro episode, and while I can't vouch for it being _better_ at rendering Office docs than LibreOffice because I don't have any two of the three installed on the same system, I can definitely say it's not perfect either. There's something wrong with the line height and/or spacing that caused some text to end up on the wrong page. Granted, I remember having issues getting it just right in Word myself and feeling like it wasn't even doing what I told it to, so maybe that's one of those "Microsoft isn't even following their own specification correctly" things you mentioned.

[@kaffeeringe]

Thank you for all your great enthusiastic videos. ❤

[@MnemonicCarrier]

I wish I could upvote this video a thousand times.

[@tridens6708]

Thanks for great Bude as New Linux user coming from MOffice

[@user-dz3ph7dl4m]

Ok this is great - thanks so much for the effort. I wish I had this about 18 months ago!

[@keithmiller9665]

What a wonderful video, REALLY helpful thank you 😊🎉

[@linuxrant]

For a moment there I thought the tuxedo laptops open by magically sticking the lid to your finger.... Pretty neat shot by the way. It would be cool if laptops actually opened this way... Steve Jobs would do it.

[@esphilee]

If you install ttf-mscorefonts-installer using apt, it will stop at the “Agreement” page, press [tab] until you see the change color, “most likely red “ then press [enter] and [tab] again to select then [enter]. Otherwise the installation cannot progress.

[@RaahimAzfar]

i was going to do vm stuff to install office for school, now i can use LibreOffice! thanks for the tip

[@wingedpanther73]

Okay, but how can we make MS Office more like LibreOffice?

[@czfxw]

Golden! Switched to fedora this afternoon and was in the process of setting up all the details... talk about timing 😁

[@stanhristov6191]

Hey so I couldn't find the answer online for this: when I open word files with the newest ms word it says the following: the operation on (insert file location and file name).docx was started with an invalid parameter. Any idea how I can proceed with it?

[@FilipeGomesDrummer]

Very informative, thanks! I'll definitely check this and test it

[@stephenwilson0386]

For basic stuff the open source offices are adequate. As a data analyst though, Excel is king and probably always will be. There's just too much advanced functionality that alternatives don't even begin to address.

[@phinix250]

And yet excel still uses visual basic for scripting. I love excel but damn the VBA

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

The professional data analysts don’t use Excel. They would use Python+Jupyter+Pandas+Matplotlib. Excel has too many problems, like misinterpreting text data in strange ways, or dropping rows if there are too many to import.

[@burning_KFC]

As always writing a comment to support the channel

[@HandballerBL]

Wow didn't know that about installing MS fonts. Thank you for showing it how to install

[@RipCityBassWorks]

I use Excel with VBA Macros for work. That program is so powerful and there just isn't an equivalent for Linux. It would be nice if Microsoft released a Linux version of Excel so that I could use it on my home computers.

[@bodamat]

If I want to share office documents with someone it is better to use Google office. I am 100% sure that it will work perfectly, but at the same time, we can work together mostly. In other choices, I use Libre office every time

[@martijnb5887]

Don't save in MS format by default. If creates problems when reopening documents especially with stlyes. Using the multisave extension is much better as it allows you to automatically save to MS formats in addition to the standard ODF formats.

[@krisballard541]

This video answered a lot of my questions.

[@tonigon5767]

Very useful presentation. Thank you Nick.

[@SlowMenThinking]

Since the late 90's Was involved with servicing Copiers/Printers and faxes Make a document with an installed printer on your local PC and guess what send that doc to somebody else and the format falls apart and to this day it is still a problem..... and that was windows only....

[@leemarkum8928]

I recently watched a similar video and someone cautioned about changing LO to save in Microsoft's default formats. They said that editing in those formats and sharing those documents can cause formatting issues for the recipient. I'm new to Linux and LO so I'm just wondering if others have heard of or experienced this issue.

[@triciamoon6312]

thank you! I really appreciated this video! It was super helpful to get things figured out with this program!

[@allanjones4283]

Brilliant video. I just installed LO today 🙂

[@tonystorcke]

You are a true master. A savage.. Excellent presentation.

[@anon_y_mousse]

This is a good idea for a video series. I personally prefer the pre-ribbon interface, but there are a lot of weirdos out there who like the ribbon.

[@fraserdow7112]

How do I make it so that PDF files will open in Writer by default? Each time it will try and open them in Draw but you can open them in writer if you manually search only for pdf files and THEN press on the PDF file to open it in writer. I don't want to have to do this each time though, is there a way to do this by default?

[@JamesStray]

You can also run sudo fc-cache -f -v to reload the fonts cache.

[@MacgyverFreitas]

Can the compatibility options cause problems reading the files on another PC with Libre Office that doesn't have these options enabled?

[@ghmh]

for Home use LO is enough to get around, Word and Email is easy was never the problem. Excel, and VBA plugins are the things, and Powerquery, and all database related stuff.

[@kraeftigerkanacke]

Hi, great video! Is it possible to pre configure these settings and deploy them on a fresh installed LibreOffice with a config file?