Make LIBREOFFICE more compatible with MICROSOFT OFFICE & 365

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This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license.
00:00 Intro
00:48 Sponsor: Secure and Monitor your Internet Connection with Safing
01:52 Make the interface more familiar and reorder it
05:10 Use Microsoft Fonts
06:51 Improve file compatibility
08:48 Import Templates and Styles
09:32 Add Extensions to get more features
11:05 Other Options
12:58 Sponsor: get a laptop or desktop that runs Linux perfectly
14:01 Support the channel
To switch to a more comfortable interface, open any of the applications of the suite. Click on the "View" menu, then "User interface". By default, it's the standard menubar and toolbar combo, but if you click on "tabbed", you'll see that you can now use a ribbon interface, just like what Microsoft Office uses.
Next, we'll look at the icons. From the tabbed interface, click the main menu, in the top right corner, and select "Options". Then click the "View" menu, and in the "Theme" drop down menu, you'll have plenty of options.
You can also reorder any of the icons from any of the tabs of the ribbon. CLick the main menu again, and then "customize". Then click the "Notebookbar" tab. here, yu'll see the "target" dropdown menu that lets you select which tab you want to change.
To install Microsoft fonts, you generally have a package in your distro's repositories, provided you enabled the non free software ones. the package is generally called ttf-mscorefonts or ttf-mscorefonts installer. On Ubuntu or Ubuntu based distros, for example, open a terminal, and run
sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
If you're using an arch based distro, you can find it in your graphical package manager through the AUR. For Fedora, I left a link in the description of the video.
www.linuxcapable.com/install-...
If you want to use these fonts by default, you can configure that as well. Click the main menu, then Options. Then, go to the name of the app you're using, here it's LibreOffice Writer, and select the "basic fonts" tab.
You'll want to enable all compatibility features. To do that, open the main menu, then Options. In the Load Save tab, click on Microsoft Office, and make sure all the checkboxes are ticked.
Next, in the LibreOffice Writer tab, and the Compatibility tab, tick the "Reorganize form menu to have it MS compatible" checkbox. Also tick the "Word compatible trailing blanks" checkmark.
Next, if you interact with MS Office users a lot, you'll want to send them documents using the Office formats. Click on the "general" tab of the Load / Save panel, and in "Always save as", select Word 2007-365 (docx). Then in the document type dropdown, select spreadsheet, and change the "always save as" field to Excel 2007-365 xlsx, and repeat that step for Presentations and the pptx format.
To import styles and templates, click the "File" tab in Writer, and then "Templates". There, click the "Manage" button, in the top right corner, and click "Import". There, you can select "templates", "presentations", or "styles".
LibreOffice lets you install extensions to add features to the suite. You can head over to extensions.libreoffice.org to view a full list.
To install extensions, download them from the extensions portal, and you'll get a .oxt file. Then, in LibreOffice, click the "Extensions" tab, then the "extensions" menu, and "Extension manager". Click the "Add" button, and go find your oxt file to import it.
After that, these extensions will all display their commands in the "Extensions" tab.
wiki.documentfoundation.org/F...
• The BEST OFFICE SUITES...

[@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.

[@Nofanboyz]

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.

[@hotrodjones74]

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.

[@adithyasunil8809]

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

[@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.

[@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! 👏

[@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.

[@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!

[@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!

[@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.

[@alperkanat3848]

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

[@davey820051]

Thanks for another useful video. Concerning the user interface, since the option first became available in GUI spread sheet apps, I've always customized a toolbar with my most-used functions, use as many keyboard shortcuts as I can, and only resort to menu bar or ribbon occasionally. I really like how amenable LibreOffice is to customization of the UI. I understand that someone who grew up with the ribbon finds it more natural, but I like the compactness of a menu bar and a single tool bar. BTW, my introduction to spreadsheets was the MS-DOS version of Lotus 123, so I've seen a few interface variations.

[@lucymorrison]

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

[@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.

[@elnicatuani05]

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

[@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

[@indiboy7]

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

[@IoanEugenStan]

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

[@michaelmoonbear4456]

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

[@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

[@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.

[@jeancorriveau8686]

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

[@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.

[@RetosSpace]

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

[@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.

[@vishalkumar040393]

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

[@kaffeeringe]

Thank you for all your great enthusiastic videos. ❤

[@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 !😅

[@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).

[@robh5695]

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

[@triciamoon6312]

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

[@lgiordanoest]

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

[@keithmiller9665]

What a wonderful video, REALLY helpful thank you 😊🎉

[@sm_stormzy1075]

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

[@snoobab_86]

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

[@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.

[@tonigon5767]

Very useful presentation. Thank you Nick.

[@fldrmaus]

Thanks for the useful tips. For the ms fonts, you show the ms-ttf-fonts package from the AUR, the arch wiki recommends to use ttf-ms-win11-auto (or win10) instead.

[@SuperPawa]

Thanks for the tips! I really like this kind of video, keep up the good work! 👍

[@user-dz3ph7dl4m]

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

[@neelsb7889]

Thank you so much, Nick!!!

[@TheodorosKosmidis]

been using libre office years now. works wonders

[@fujumphol]

Awesome! Thanks for these valuable tips.

[@pb1963]

Thanks. This was really very useful.

[@scottfranco1962]

Lots of good hints here, thank you.

[@jamessmith4229]

Nicely presented. As usual; thanks.

[@krisballard541]

This video answered a lot of my questions.

[@czfxw]

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

[@jesse7631]

Great video Nick as always! I really like LibreOffice, but also use the SoftMaker FreeOffice is a great product as well.

[@thienanhnguyenbui]

Thank you for your video. I use LibreOffice Writer for my Math documents

[@AP-rv6kk]

Really helpful video, thank you!

[@AfonsoKlein]

Thanks a lot for this fine tutorial!

[@gerardmcnally]

Excellent video my friend. Thank you.

[@JauStudioFR]

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

[@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.

[@darkneofire]

Perfect video for me. I'm learning and this save my life ✌️✌️✌️ Thank you Nick. 🙇🙇🙇

[@Ensamhet]

Amazing tips. Thank you.

[@richd6362]

Thank you. The video was very useful.

[@baninabrar98]

Really useful video. Thanks!

[@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

[@srb1855]

Excellent video - very helpful.👍

[@baozhongimperial3851]

Really interesting and well done explanations!

[@sblugdu4726]

Merci ! Je vais peut-être apprendre à aimer Libre Office grâce à ta vidéo !

[@albertbacker7751]

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

[@anand_maurya]

Thank you very much for this useful info.

[@SIGP229TPOC]

This is good stuff. Thanks so much!

[@tridens6708]

Thanks for great Bude as New Linux user coming from MOffice

[@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。

[@allanjones4283]

Brilliant video. I just installed LO today 🙂

[@jwlrose]

Excellent tutorial. Merci beaucoup.

[@wansh013]

Your videos are really good. Need a part 2 this 👍🏻 Some girls might dislike the video just to chat with you 😋

[@EmmanuelDevillers]

Hop, je partage ! Très utile, merci beaucoup.

[@sebastianherrera1492]

Very useful!

[@sanjaisrao484]

Excellent explanation

[@donfruendo]

Good timing, just came home :)

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Nice!

[@anoldslowhorse]

very useful video, thank you

[@MnemonicCarrier]

I wish I could upvote this video a thousand times.

[@Slugbunny]

Handy guide, thanks!

[@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.

[@spikeukspikeuk]

Thanks for this.

[@rafaelk1631]

Great video Nick. Was hoping to see some content on saving Libre Office documents saved to M365 locations like SharePoint. Appreciate this might be possible by syncing to a local folder then to OneDrive, but I wondered if it was possible to see your SharePoint locations when saving a Libre Office document? Thanks

[@HandballerBL]

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

[@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.

[@JamesStray]

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

[@ninjanerdstudent6937]

I like Libre Office even more now.

[@168Crankk]

very compact and helpfull thank you

[@rwashi]

thanks nick

[@BadeniaFilme]

Great Video

[@enderprism]

Nice video as always :)

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks!

[@thagrg2]

Keep those videos up bro.

[@burning_KFC]

As always writing a comment to support the channel

[@chadparsons50]

Thanks for the tips.

[@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.

[@markdavid7013]

Very informative.

[@danielarrr6052]

Thanks, very useful video. keep doing what you do! I think that Libreoffice Writer is fantastic, but for spreadsheets I use Onlyoffice as it has the format table templates which I don't think Libreoffice Calc has yet.

[@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.

[@currentsubset6885]

I was JUST thinking about this

[@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.

[@Nofanboyz]

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

[@bhargavjitbhuyan9394]

Thankx.

[@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.