Why not switch from Microsoft 365 to Open Office

[dennis thompson]

I pay $84/year for Microsoft 365. I have been looking at Open Office and it does the same thing for free. I, almost exclusively, use it for spreadsheets with a very occasional word document.
Is there any reason for me to keep Microsoft 356?
Thanks

[Bill George]

But it does not have all those important new features!!! WHAT? I need to write a letter or do a spreadsheet, what has changed I Need in the past 30 years?? I stopped buying Office with XP. Be sure to Save with the .doc and Excel formats.

[roger wiegand]

If it works for you, no reason not to. Similarly for using Google Docs, or the Apple productivity suite, or any of the other alternatives. Some of us have 30+ years of brain training that make us reluctant to switch and learn the subtleties of a new system at this point, so pay for that privilege. There probably hasn't been a critical new feature in Word since Word III way back when (I think that's when good footnoting was introduced), but knowing all the tricks and shortcuts that decades of daily use has engrained has value. If someday they'd make placing images actually work well I'd revise my opinion of the best version.

[Jim Becker]

My reason for not considering that? OneDrive. A terabyte of storage for every user with access to the account for a hundred bucks a year and accessible from multiple devices per person. I don't actually use the applications much, but do use Word, Excel and Powerpoint from time to time. Others use the apps more because of school or work, depending on the individual.

[Curt Harms]

The biggest reason to stick with MS Office would be file compatibility. For business use that can be critical. Libre Office (Open Office successor and recommended) doesn't really support MS macros. Especially in Excel that can be a deal killer. There are other office suites that are said to have better MS Office compatability. OnlyOffice and Softmaker Office are other choices. WPS Office is said to have the best MS Office compatibility. I haven't tried any of them, Libreoffice does what I need it to do.

[Brian Tymchak]

I haven't checked into the 3rd party spreadsheet offerings lately but it used to be that they didn't offer the macro programming capabilities and some of the more sophisticated data anslysis worksheet functions that Excel does. I was a bit of a power user of Excel during my IT career and none of the Excel alternatives could do what I needed to. That was a few years ago though.

If you are a basic user of spreadsheets then Open Office is probably going to meet your needs. If you are a power user, you should dig in to the details to see if it will meet your needs.

[dennis thompson]

I haven't checked into the 3rd party spreadsheet offerings lately but it used to be that they didn't offer the macro programming capabilities and some of the more sophisticated data anslysis worksheet functions that Excel does. I was a bit of a power user of Excel during my IT career and none of the Excel alternatives could do what I needed to. That was a few years ago though.

If you are a basic user of spreadsheets then Open Office is probably going to meet your needs. If you are a power user, you should dig in to the details to see if it will meet your needs.

Thanks everyone for the advice.
I am very far from a power use, so I think Open Office will do everything I need. I plan to work with it for a week or two before I cancel my subscription

[Lee Schierer]

I would recommend LibreOffice as it is the more active version. I recently ran into a problem with Open Office that occurs in the Calc program. You can copy and paste a single cell as many times as you want. If you select more than a single cell the spreadsheet locks up and you have to use the task manager to shut it down. Then you have to try to recover your spreadsheet. This problem has been reported, yet no permanent fix has been forthcoming. LibreOffice doesn't have that problem. My understanding is that the majority of programmers that supported OpenOffice got fed up and started a new free software package that is actively supported.

[Lee DeRaud]

The biggest reason to stick with MS Office would be file compatibility. For business use that can be critical. Libre Office (Open Office successor and recommended) doesn't really support MS macros. Especially in Excel that can be a deal killer.


I haven't checked into the 3rd party spreadsheet offerings lately but it used to be that they didn't offer the macro programming capabilities and some of the more sophisticated data analysis worksheet functions that Excel does.
(raises hand) Yup. Sometimes there's no substitute for real programming.

I've gotten pretty good with VBA (Visual Basic for Applications, which CorelDraw also uses). I'm sure the open-source versions have something similar (using Python or Ruby or some such), but I'm well past the point where I need/want to learn yet another language/dialect. And at only $60/year for every device in the house, there's just no real incentive to do so.

[Jerome Stanek]

I have been running Office 2000 since it first came out. no need to pay yearly

[Rich Engelhardt]

I have been running Office 2000 since it first came out. no need to pay yearlyMaybe not for a home user, but, I could write volumes about the times, in business, that people had really serious compatibility issues because they didn't upgrade when they should have.


+2 for Libre Office. It has active support and is regularly updated.

[Ken Combs]

But it does not have all those important new features!!! WHAT? I need to write a letter or do a spreadsheet, what has changed I Need in the past 30 years?? I stopped buying Office with XP. Be sure to Save with the .doc and Excel formats.

Funny you should mention the updated features. I still have and use Office 2000 with W11 on my desktop machine! They say it can't be done, but I have the original disk and it works. Unfortunately my new laptop has no CD/DVR drive, like most. So I downloaded Libre-office.

[Ken Combs]

I would recommend LibreOffice as it is the more active version. I recently ran into a problem with Open Office that occurs in the Calc program. You can copy and paste a single cell as many times as you want. If you select more than a single cell the spreadsheet locks up and you have to use the task manager to shut it down. Then you have to try to recover your spreadsheet. This problem has been reported, yet no permanent fix has been forthcoming. LibreOffice doesn't have that problem. My understanding is that the majority of programmers that supported OpenOffice got fed up and started a new free software package that is actively supported.

May be unique to the first machine I tried using Open Office but it was so slow to open that I've never used it since. LibreOffice seems fine for my limited use.

[Lee DeRaud]

Funny you should mention the updated features. I still have and use Office 2000 with W11 on my desktop machine! They say it can't be done, but I have the original disk and it works. Unfortunately my new laptop has no CD/DVR drive, like most.
As long as the desktop still has a CD/DVD drive, it can be shared to the laptop. (I'm assuming the two machines are networked.)

Worst case, you can export the disk's image to an ISO file and copy it to the laptop. Win11 can open it as if it was a physical disk.

[Karl Loeblein]

As an Excel power user, one major feature missing in all other spreadsheet apps is Power Query. This gives Excel an in-memory database capability that allows it to extract, transform, load and analyze just about any data source. I’ve seen Excel load and analyze more than 300 million rows which far exceeds the max row limit for a worksheet. Granted this feature is only needed if your doing more complex analysis work in a business environment.

[Clifford McGuire]

My workplace moved from MS Office to Google docs, so I started using it at home. If there is something missing, I don't know what it is.

Files created on Word/Excel/PPT open just fine in Google Docs and I can save in either format.

[Curt Harms]

(raises hand) Yup. Sometimes there's no substitute for real programming.

I've gotten pretty good with VBA (Visual Basic for Applications, which CorelDraw also uses). I'm sure the open-source versions have something similar (using Python or Ruby or some such), but I'm well past the point where I need/want to learn yet another language/dialect. And at only $60/year for every device in the house, there's just no real incentive to do so.

Yeah, Libre Office has their own macro language I believe and Python works. It was a conscious decision to not support MS macros. MS macros are a well known malware vector. No MS macros, eliminate a whole class of malware.

[Curt Harms]

Maybe not for a home user, but, I could write volumes about the times, in business, that people had really serious compatibility issues because they didn't upgrade when they should have.

+2 for Libre Office. It has active support and is regularly updated.

People keep a copy of Libre Office around to open older MS Office files that new MS Office won't open. Libre Office will often open older MS Office documents better than new MS Office. A tip when creating LO documents that may be opened by MS Office users - Save as the older MS file formats; .doc instead of .docx, xls instead of xlsx. MS are no longer 'improving' the old file formats so they're not moving targets for compatibility.

[Bill George]

People keep a copy of Libre Office around to open older MS Office files that new MS Office won't open. Libre Office will often open older MS Office documents better than new MS Office. A tip when creating LO documents that may be opened by MS Office users - Save as the older MS file formats; .doc instead of .docx, xls instead of xlsx. MS are no longer 'improving' the old file formats so they're not moving targets for compatibility.

Microsoft's sole purpose in the constant Unneeded upgrades and what upgrades do you need to write a letter or do a spreadsheet that wasn't done 20 years ago? The Constant upgrades are a revenue source for MS and that's it!

[Jim Becker]

That's kinda the point in business, Bill...and additional revenue is what shareholders expect. But I do not believe the sole reasons for the upgrades are purely about revenue and profit. They have added a lot of features, fixes and cross application benefits over the years. It's true that the casual user likely will never care about them, but folks who "live" in the Office environment in the business world do and that's where the majority of the Office revenue comes from.

[Jerome Stanek]

Funny you should mention the updated features. I still have and use Office 2000 with W11 on my desktop machine! They say it can't be done, but I have the original disk and it works. Unfortunately my new laptop has no CD/DVR drive, like most. So I downloaded Libre-office.

I copied Office 2000 to a usb stick so I could use it without a cd drive. It runs fine on my Windows 11 laptop

[Jerome Stanek]

Microsoft's sole purpose in the constant Unneeded upgrades and what upgrades do you need to write a letter or do a spreadsheet that wasn't done 20 years ago? The Constant upgrades are a revenue source for MS and that's it!
sort of like the light bulb. They made them to last but someone said that they should only last so long so people have to keep buying them

[Bill George]

Its all fine and dandy to keep Bill Gates from running out of money, but a lot of business's are wondering the same thing I did. Folks are moving off the MS Office merry go round and using other Office like suites. Like I said, not much has changed in document writing in the past 20 years or so. Even when I was teaching and using PowerPoint nearly every day, the need for constant upgrades was not there.

[Brian Elfert]

I just renewed my personal Office 365 for another year for just over $50. I get a discount because my employer has Office 365. I guess I never really considered an alternative to MS Office. My employer uses Office 365 and we pay for the version that includes the Office Suite for PCs. There is also a version of Office 365 for enterprise that is web only. My employer uses other Microsoft services that integrate with Outlook so we pretty much had to have the MS Office suite. Now that a web version of Outlook is available we are looking at switching most employees to the web version of MS Office and removing any installed version of Office.

Finance people almost always need to have the installed version of Excel. Finance people often generate huge spreadsheets. My employer's finance people were screaming to go to the 64 bit version of Excel because they were hitting the ceiling of what the 32 bit version of Excel could do.

[Brian Elfert]

Its all fine and dandy to keep Bill Gates from running out of money, but a lot of business's are wondering the same thing I did. Folks are moving off the MS Office merry go round and using other Office like suites. Like I said, not much has changed in document writing in the past 20 years or so. Even when I was teaching and using PowerPoint nearly every day, the need for constant upgrades was not there.

I wonder how many big companies are really looking to drop the MS Office suite? Approximately $150 per employee per year for MS Office is a small price to pay to have Office on your PCs for big companies. Bigger companies have Enterprise Agreements with Microsoft and can potentially pay even less than $150 per employee per year for Office suite. For smaller companies it can be a bigger deal to pay that cost for each employee and it absolutely makes sense to look at alternatives.