Now. Why am I wrong for Libre
Libre Office isn’t just a usable substitute for Word and the rest of Office. It is downright superior – it being free and open source need not even be in the equation. I tried to use Word on my partner’s laptop the other day and all I could think was “what is this crap??”.
Just for the record, people who are used to Word say the same about Libre Office.
Unfortunately, how familiar we are with a tool is much more important to us than how good it is.
There’s a lot of subjective differences between Word and Writer.
Image placement is not one of them. Writer gives you the anchor and asks exactly where you would like it put.
Coming from OfficeWord and having recently switched to LibreWriter, I almost deinstalled again after failing to move a table, though.
Working with tables in general is a bit of a pain. I will stay with Libre, mainly for idealistic reasons :P but I really can’t say that it’s the better program based on my experiences so far.
I too prefer Writer over Word, but Calc is a poor substitute for Excel.
Excel alone is the reason why Microsoft Office is the defacto standard. Nobody gives a shit about word processing or mail clients. It’s also not even about spreadsheets and calculating stuff. It’s all about those VBA scripts in Excel.
Wanna know something fun about Office?
The keyboard shortcuts are localized.YES, REALLY.
If you press Ctrl+S when running in Portuguese, it doesn’t save, it underlines the word instead (Because the word for it is “Sublinhar”).
Whoever is responsible for this decision won’t die, when their time comes they’ll be swallowed whole by the earth and welcomed into the 10th circle of hell, created for them exclusively.
The excel function thing has had me fucking irate every time I want to use Excel
My fucking god just thinking about it has my blood pressure rising
Like Ok I get why they localize them but my fucking god just make both versions work like what the fuck is wrong with you
So the Japanese version would require
Ctrl+ほ?Many such wacky cases in Windows. Like where you install your software (“Program Files”) is localized too.
It’s only half localized though, the actual path is still called program files. It just displays the localized name. Which is somehow even worse.
And if you type in the address bar it’ll suggest the localized version and then give you an error because it doesn’t exist. Drives me bananas.
I haven’t used a localized version of Windows so I don’t know for sure, but sources I can find says it’s actually different in different languages: https://www.samlogic.net/articles/program-files-folder-different-languages.htm
I thought my respect for Word had troughed.
Yeah, it’s really shitty. In German, Ctrl+F is Bold.
Nah Ctrl+F is “Finden”. Bold (“Fett”) ist Ctrl+Shift+F
I sure am glad I just use English on all my devices despite it not being my native language.
Oh i fucking hate this one, at least once a week I hit control S and excel goes "no problem I’ll underline that cell fo you cause obviously that’s the shortcut for ‘sublinhar’ "
But that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is the actual save shortcut in portuguese.
It’s ctrl+b. I can’t think of any portuguese ‘B’ word that would translate to save.
‘Save’ = ‘salvar’.
But we can’t do Ctrl+s BECAUSE THAT SHORTCUT IS ALREADY TAKEN
I HATE this. Got absolutely shellshocked by this on a work computer recently.
Luckily, you can “just” change your locale! This is a process that took me a whole hour to figure out, required admin access as well as a system reboot. And it didn’t even work properly.
The same day I ran into a quirk regarding the filename field. Fun fact: Word pulls this directly from the OS. This almost makes sense, except if you want to decide whether or not the file ending is displayed (ie .word). Then you need to set this IN YOUR OS?! There is no other way to set this, and it is broken. When you finally figure this out and set it back to not display the file ending, word keeps doing it, seemingly forever. Yes also through reboots. This issue was fixed over 10 years ago, and then promptly reintroduced and never addressed again. Libreoffice just has another field, this took me all of 30 seconds to discover. But then you have to save in odf, because the word format is ass apparently.
The commands in Excel are localised too, and if you want to change languages you’d have to install some language pack. And I think that due to admin lockdown policies in Windows, if you have to work on a restricted company machine, you won’t even be able to do that because you don’t have permission to install stuff
Wait till you hear about localized Visual Basic
No fucking way
Well, Ctrl+S is def what I would expect my programme to do for saving. But for Italics I want nothing else but Strg+Umschalt+K. English hegemony can get bent.
It’s still a damned shame that they killed Microsoft Works.
I actually miss Encarta. It was obviously killed by Google earth/maps but it was one of the only maps that allowed you to search for a river and it would highlight the entire thing from mouth to ocean , which google has never done. It was a nice feature that let you see just how big a given tributary system really was.
Is this a feature that could be implemented in one of the open source map projects?
Want to automate your office document? Enjoy making your business dependent on a language
- that will be a dead end for your developer career
- where arrays can start at 0 or 1
- where checking for an array involves ignoring an error and resuming
- that is guaranteed to be broken a future patch
- that has to be given permission to run in a security center
Everyone complaining here about not being able to have unique footers or moving images or ignoring spelling errors just doesn’t know what they’re doing. You’re literally the bad workman blaming the tool. I can do all of those things in Word.
If you prefer another tool, fine. But please stop shitting on things just because you don’t understand them.
And PDF was never meant to be edited. It’s sole purpose is to give you a document file which comes out exactly the same on computer screens and printers everywhere. Compact, reliable, compatible. If you need to replace parts of a PDF document post publication, it should be prepared using the Forms tools that are readily available in all good PDF suites.
By the way: I paid 30 Euros for an Office 2019 lifetime license. If ever that should not receive further updates then I’m ready to fork over another 30.
Yeah, it’s so weird seeing all the ones being proud of their tech illiteracy.
All because, right clicking.
Is too much for their small brains to handle.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable or noobish to expect intuitive functions like drag and drop to work properly.
Word is fucking terrible because the workflow is terrible.
It’s not the end users fault when you consider that literally any alternative works properly.
I don’t know how to explain this to you.
But I have never had a problem, or never seen anyone else have a problem. With right clicking. To change the image formatting. To allow drag and drop.
The only time. Are online threads like these. And with how People talk, it sounds like you’re trying to use Word as if it’s Publisher.
“The issue doesn’t affect me, so it doesn’t exist” lol. It’s bad design, whether you agree with that or not…
What exactly is the bad design. Because that’s never been established.
It’s just people getting pissy that right clicking is too difficult.
You can only design around incompetence so much.
lol imagine blaming paid users for ms shit workflow
Imaging people complain about how shit the software is and in response writing 4 paragraphs that amount to “skill issue, get gud.”
I was working on my thesis a couple days ago using Word, and it permanently deleted a whole line of text when I pressed ctrl+Z to undo a mistake.
That happened with every line on the page until i copied everything to a different text editor and then copied it back to Word.
I respect your take but I will never respect Word.
Using word for a thesis sounds like a nightmare I would never dare to do
For big projects like that, stuff like LaTeX is so much better in my experience, you could even set up version control for it with, say, git, or similar
“I love typing in ten thousand pounds of syntatic sugar”
– me, an idiot who used embedded images for formulas in a markdown file which gets converted into a PDF
“Totally way easier than LaTeX, I swear”
You may benefit from checking out Typst which gives all of the benefits (and some more) of LaTeX, but without all of the syntax garbage.
Actually learned about this recently too and it looks really cool, but haven’t had to use latex in a while so I’ll defnitley give it a shot next time I have to do document generation
I actually wrote most of it in Obsidian, just copied all of it to Word for final edits because I have to use my school’s docx template.
Definitely trying LaTeX if I end up getting another degree, only learned about it a few days ago. And I just now realized that I could’ve used git with Obsidian this whole time…
because I have to use my school’s docx template.
For a thesis. wtf.
You know ctrl+Y is ‘re-do’ though right? Just brings it right back.
Yup. That was the first thing I tried, but it also nuked my entire undo history.
My condolences. I’ve heard good things about LaTeX for scientific papers even though the UI seems a bit daunting.
The “UI” is a text editor.
You’re holding it wrong
then I’m ready to fork over another 30.
30 per month now probably
No, for another license that will last me another seven years or however long their service period is. I think I actually have an LTSC license so it might be longer.
And PDF was never meant to be edited
Lol what kind of dumb shit is this to say? There are tons of pdf editors out there, its fucking 2025 and we have incredible technology. Your entire post comes across as a pathetic apologist for multil billion dollars companies.
its fucking 2025 and we have incredible technology
Yes, and we can modify a VW beetle to turn it into a space ship but why would we?
That would be dope as hell, someone should do that
The web was also never meant to be dynamic. And yet.
It was a apologist statement without a doubt. It was the equivalent of nuh uh.
Word is garbage for what people pay for it. Still charging for the same old software decades later only everything has been rearranged for your convenience err I mean vendor lock in.
Again, I can fully understand if you like other tools better. More power to ya, competition is healthy and all that. But the complaints I specifically addressed are simply unfounded.
I’m not a fanboy nor do I get paid to defend Microsoft. But I have worked with Microsoft Office for 30 years now, and I do get paid to train people how to use it. 99% of users just don’t have the fuckingest clue how anything works in Word. Most can’t even tell a line break from a paragraph break and people still use their PC like a typewriter to indent text…in 2025 🙄
Its amazing how much a little bit of knowledge makes your documents look so much nicer. In my image-heavy documents using page breaks can help limit cascading formatting changes for example. Throw in an autogenerated table of contents, a light drop shadow on your images, a custom template with your corporate letterhead and consistent formatting via the selected theme and you have a recipe for a very professional looking document with nice formatting
Word is like any other word processor nowadays. Pretending it is something special is patently ridiculous.
I was around before Word ever existed and I was never impressed because it was never impressive. In fact, I have been continually disappointed by the changes they have made to promote vendor lock in.
I remember when their was a difference between the return key and the enter key.
there
Pretending it is especially unusable, you mean? Hard agree. Absolute cringe. In fact, that was my entire point.
Nowhere did I write a glowing recommendation of Word as the superior word processing software of today. In fact, I acknowledged several times that there are other valid options out there.
And I’m getting mighty tired of this bad faith argumentation style.
I will gladly speak to that. Is it unusable? No, it works.
That is not saying much though. I have a ton of legitimate gripes about Word. I think their greatest sin in usability was breaking the pull down menu system which was pretty much universal in favor of the dreaded ribbon bar.
Then not standardization the ribbon bar and instead constantly shuffling around where things are found from version to version. It was and even to this day absolutely infuriating. The reason they did this, to promote vendor lock in is even more messed up.
Their next biggest problem is file interoperability. Not only did did they insert their foot into any file standardization process they also even broke their own standards to once again promote vendor lock in.
MS spent a ton of time and resources breaking standards just to force people to use their product. Excuse me if that makes me dislike them. I don’t hate them because I have trouble formatting documents (although image manipulation in word is absolutely ass to this day).
I don’t like them because they are a shit company selling the same old garbage repackaged with a bow. Word should have been free software over a decade ago. Instead, people keep paying them and they keep coming up with worse ideas.
The newest is disabling autosave unless you have OneDrive installed and activated. I literally could not believe they broke autosave, but they did. Of course they like to say it is even better now with OneDrive but we all know the truth. It is another dose of vendor lock in.
Microsoft is a toxic company that you get to deal with for a living. Getting your feathers ruffled because someone like me is shitting on MS has to be one of the stupidest things I have ever seen. We can agree on everything I am saying. I am not here complaining why there is a extra space between paragraphs.
I am getting mighty tired of the reality of MS. It was old thirty years ago when I first switched to Linux. They have done so much damage to computing in the name of profits it isn’t funny and Word/Office has always been the gas in their vehicle to do it.
This propaganda needs to stop LibreOffice stinks
OnlyOffice if you’re there for the most classic MS Office experience.
Otherwise, did you set up LibreOffice properly so that it suits your taste?
To play devils advocate, why does LibreOffice get the pass that it needs customization for you to like it, but office doesn’t get the same pass. I would love if we all used open software and standards, but if I ever have to give office documents to Linda in accounting, anything other than a Word or Excel document won’t compute.
Well of course, we have to give credit to MS, who paid a significant sum to customise our whole system and our brains to match the parameters of MS Office.
And well, if something is customisable, you would expect the makers (who are not being paid by you) to set the defaults to their requirements and not yours.
Because LibreOffice is very easy to thoroughly customize with out-of-the-box functionality. In fact, recent versions of LibreOffice (or at least its flavor for OpenSUSE) allow you to customize the looks at first launch, so that you feel at home straight away.
Yeah, sure, but Microsoft Word web app scrolls smoother than native LibreOffice Writer on my laptop (on Linux), and there are also other bits of LibreOffice that sucks and have sucked for years.
Some of the smoothing is the first thing anyone notices when using Libre Office over Word. The scrolling is smooth, the words being typed into the page are smoothed and the text itself somehow appears smoother
I think the main difference here is: You don’t have to pay for libre office.
I taught my brother basic programming when he was 7, and then a little pascal. When he was 8 he asked for a fat C+ programming manual for Christmas. When he was 9, he made a working version of MS Word from scratch, it even saved files in compatible file formats.
That was 1989. I think Word has not improved since then, but my brother is doing alright for himself. I still like to fix computers, but I don’t work in computer science.
There is LaTex which I would recommend for any kind of longer document.
Oh the hours spent writing math formulas. You feel like a wizard, conjuring beautiful equations with an ancient arcane language
Because nobody got ever fired for choosing Microsoft. It’s like that with a lot of stuff. It’s the default choice because everybody else uses it, good or not. Almost nobody is going to stick their neck outs to chose something differently.
The business world in a nutshell, borrowed from Dead Poets Society: https://youtu.be/nJ_htuCMCqM
edit a pdf? Edit your expectations.
I feel seen. The number of times I’ve actually needed to do this is too damn high. Sure, I feel entitled to not have to pay for the privilege, as the task was usually thrust upon me by some bank, HR department, or legal firm. But the number of scummy websites online that will happily play with your doc’s confidential info for free, is too damn high. I can’t imagine anyone with average computer skills navigating this particular turing tarpit unscathed.
I pay for Nitro PDF locally
Inkscape is a free vector editor that handles pdf edits relatively well. Always my goto.
* Assuming you’re making minor changes.I’ve used Inkscape for a lot of vector art. Using it to edit a PDF seems… overkill, but it’s probably less likely to screw things up. I’ll give that a shot next time, thanks!
I (average user) was given a case of sensitive information and told to edit it/update it/reupload it. Using my work device was the expectation…but I had not been granted any paid software to do so.
The IT guy was like “you can use this website” which was almost certainly a violation given the nature of the data. It was maddening because I knew (I also did not use one of those websites).
You can also edit a PDF with LibreOffice Draw
Firefox now allows you to edit PDFs locally, for most use cases it is enough. There is also PDFsam Basic, an open-source tool to divide, merge, extract pages, rotate, etc.
I’m using Libre office at the moment to actually write something more than a few pages, and it’s English dictionary is missing like 50% of the English language.
*its
Yeah, I’ve been having trouble with that, because its is possessive. I never claimed to actually know what I’m doing, just that I am. Fortunately this time, I probably can’t injur myself horrifically.
And I’m learning now that their’s is incorrect.
Give him a break, typing with libreoffice. He didn’t know
No, I really didn’t. Its is a possessive, and that’s been tripping me up. I should have about 150 of those to fix in my draft.
Boy oh boy, I can’t wait to use Libre Office Writer and have the exact same issues, but only half the features!
I’m going to be honest and I mean this sincerely.
What features has word added in the last decade that are actually impactful?
Collaborative editing is the main thing that puts it above Libre in a professional setting.
I use Libre at home, but at work MS Office wins 😕
Ok but that isn’t really word in the libre office sense. That’s more Microsoft 365, which is fair I guess because I don’t even know if you can buy the actual software anymore.
Are you able to do the collaborative editing in the local software or is it just the browser based Google docs equivalent?
Online LibreOffice exists and is called Collabora: https://www.collaboraonline.com/
Works great, for example in Nextcloud.
I wouldn’t mind some book writing features, like the ability to jump to chapters, and maybe text previews of each. I don’t think Office does this either, but it would be nice. Also…why does it use an English dictionary that’s missing like 30% of the language?
Tbf, most Microsoft software sucks. Everything they touch gets sticky and moldy, like SwiftKey and Skype.
Get this Excel slander out of here.
I have made so many thousands of dollars in consulting fees because people don’t know about the “align object: over text” option. I would even show them, and they’d still call me back the next week offering money.
