Microsoft Office vs LibreOffice | How to Make the Change
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- čas přidán 11. 07. 2024
- This goes over moving from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. There are certain compatibility changes you must make to retain compatibility with Microsoft Office. This tutorial goes over making all the required changes.
Needed Windows Fonts for Writing Documents:
sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
wget qO plasmasturm.org/dl/vistafonts-... | bash .
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I used libreoffice during college, then I used it during my masters, I wrote my thesis on it. I'm a teacher now and I still use libreoffice. Yeah, it may not be eyecandy, but it delivers!
Yes indeed! In fact, I think Libre's new version is actually quite elegant.
You should send your students an ODF file as an April fool's day joke.
@@greasysteve5671 Just imagine,
"The frick is an ODF file?!"
Then that one Linux kid is just thinking "Oh yeah."
Mr. Hinojosa, that's amazing!
My wife used Word for her masters thesis. It got to the point where the DOCX file was massive and took forever to open. A week before she needed to submit to the printers, Word gave up on the file with a 'cannot open file' type message. In desperation, I installed Libreoffice on my Windows notebook and opened the file. It took a while to open and kept spitting back messages about correcting invalid references etc. But it did open. And then saved to 40% of the Word file size. Libreoffice does DOCX better than Microsoft. That is a demonstration in compatibility!!
On a slight note, NEVER set the default to docx format. It is so not recommended to save in docx format in libre office, IF you're going to edit it later. ALWAYS save in .odf format, BUT when you want to share the doc you can save it as .DOCX for sharing.
Can you help me understand why this matters?
Joined to question higher.
@@nicole-secondaryemail-mort9617 cause if you save and edit it as a docx file the file may break, so you should save it as an odf file and edit it that way. When you need to share it you just save it again as a docx.
@@TAmzid2872 Got it, thank you!
@@TAmzid2872why should it break? Isn't libre compatible with docx?
I've written and published a tabletop RPG (The Chronicles of Ember) with LibreOffice. I don't miss MS Office at all.
I use libre office version 6.1.6.3, i think that's the corporate version at the time. for most of my linux research and linux book summaries. all i can say is, for me, it works great. never had any issues with it, very stable too. thank you for sharing your knowledge.-Debian 9 user.
This video should be titled “how to make Libre Office work in a Microsoft Word world”
It definitely does not live up to its actual title
less that it doesn't live up to it's actuall title, but more that it's one of the most helpful videos for "LibreOffice to MsOffice compatability" and etc
I've been using Libreoffice for years and I think it's great! I see no reason why anyone would think of going back to use Microsoft office
auto save is a big reason i’m going back
Auto correct doesn't work as good and when I try to embed a picture, it goes in a weird place and it's hard to fix.
@@dreamleaf6784 Well, autocorrect works perfectly for me! The problem with inserting images is a general one of all the office software and not at all specific of Libreoffice. Just search about how to handle it and after a bit of trying you'll learn how to make it easy. I wrote my master's thesis with hundreds of images and all the technical aspects in Libreoffice so you can definitely use it with ease for any purpose.
@@maybethisismarq I never had such problem!
Thanks. Timing of this upload is perfect for me, having installed Zorin OS last week as a new-to-Linux convert...
Been using it for years in my law practice. It checks all the boxes for me. Love it.
I use LibreOffice BTW
OH PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE THOSE I USE BTWs ARE THE WORST THINGS EVA
@@gayanekhachatryan7509 I USE CAPITALS BTW
no caps btw
@@gayanekhachatryan7509 specially "I use Arch BTW"😂😂
Thanks for posting this video! Given all the years I've been using LibreOffice, I never enabled the experimental features. :) lol I have mixed thoughts about changing LibreOffice to look more like MS Office, but I can definitely understand the desire to do so. The main thing is people spend time to learn how much functionality LibreOffice really has. Calc doesn't support VB Script for macros, so I can understand that being an issue. However, Calc does provide a *ton* of features and functions similar to Excel. My dad is an Excel "power" user and does a lot with multi-sheet spreadsheets, including hiding rows, using formulas that span multiple sheets, and a bunch of other stuff I never knew Excel could do. lol I switch him to LibreOffice years ago and he'll have an occasional question about how to do something, and I've always found the answer by doing a little research. I just don't use spreadsheet applications with much frequency at all.
In any event, thanks for posting the video!
Calc does have scripting available via LibreOffice Basic, or you can use Python, Javascript and possibly others.
Having used both VB script and LibreOffice Basic, I will have to admit that the former is more intuitive and easier to program in, but they both have their quirks.
There are copyright reasons why LibreOffice doesn't look like MS Office or have some of it's features installed be default, out of the box.
A very good point! Lots of people don't realize that Bill Gates took a ton of typography courses and is the father of many of these copyrighted fonts we use today.
@@ChrisTitusTech and you know what, I tend to like the default button layout more than the contextual grouping you did here. I never did care for Microsoft's decision to implement it back in 2012.
@@ChrisTitusTech Both statements about Bill Gates are total news to me. Microsoft chased Apple on all things font and DTP, stuffing up endlessly along the way. They did however muscle out all competition by fair means and foul which is why the fonts people use most are from Microsoft Office. Only few of which were commissioned by them.
I think you have got your stories all mixed up. It was Steve Jobs who took Calligraphy courses that lead to his perfectionism with typography on the Mac.
@@ChrisTitusTech Actually knowing what I know of Bill Gates the notion of him taking time off from building the Microsoft empire to do typography courses, sounds quite ridiculous.
Yeah, you are right! Steve jobs was the one that took calligraphy courses and made many of the fonts we use today. Hard to keep these facts straight since everyone stole from everybody. Gates was just the best thief of them all because he understood the contracts and legal process. The true inventors of the personal computer of today were the Xerox PARC folks.
Thank you Chris for this tutorial. For Ubuntu Users: If you get an error that says the latest installer is already installed like I did (And still don't have the MS fonts), then you need to renew the license agreement by typing this:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall ttf-mscorefonts-installer. Then ok the message and click YES to agree to EULA.
Casual2020 What about sudo dpkg-reconfigure ttf-mscorefonts-installer?
@@hyperspeed1313 Don't know about that. Chris probably does though. All I can say is I got an error and then when I went into the directory of /usr/share/fonts there was a folder there called ttfmsfonts. In that folder was a README file that said to issue the command I show above. Honestly, I wasn't trying to be a smart-ass or a know-it-all. I was just trying to help out.
Seems more like the title would be MS Word vs Libre Writer
The default layout of LibreOffice is actually closer to the old MSO 2003 layout. New LO also comes with an option to turn on tabbed toolbars, effectively giving something similar to MSO 2007 (and later) ribbon interface.
The fonts is a definite must for formatting purposes, though there are licensing issues with some of them. Usually it doesn't open as garbage on either LO or MSO, but it attempts the closest matching installed font, else a default font. This tends to mean layout changes as character spacings differ between fonts. Most word processing uses standard character encodings like UTF or ASCII, so the most common letters would work perfectly fine no matter the font chosen (except when going for some weird font like Dingbats).
Also DOCX and ODF (or rather ODT for text documents) were the two competing open document formats. MSO's DOCX won due to MSO having such a huge user base. But there were lots of controversy as MS tended to add non-standard stuff into their format. Same goes for XLSX and ODS. There is also filter packs you can install for MSO so it can in fact handle ODF formats: www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17062
BTW, if you use styles in your documents (which really you should be doing even in MSO) then Libre's style manager palette is a much nicer way of working with them.
As for Calc, it really just feels like Excel 2003. Though I do miss auto table formatting and the filer buttons on table headers. I have run into one situation where Calc just doesn't work well - formatting numbers in engineering notation, it only has scientific, in Excel you can fiddle with some custom formatting options to simulate engineering notation.
As for VBA, yep that's a big problem. LO does have SBasic which is very similar and you do get translate tools which does a lot of the grinds to change VBA scripts to SBasic. But they're never perfect and you will have to tweak them. Else just stick to MSO for these things.
Thank you for this video, I wanted to transition everything to linux and became frustrated with the font and general structure and then went back to windows for some excel work. Please make more of this videos that help in transitioning
It's a matter of age, I guess. I like the LibreOffice display because it looks like MS Office did when I started using it years ago: simpler, cleaner, and with the traditional universal menu system. It's one system for nearly all applications.
yeah, agree (:
thank you very much. this is awesome , i am a recent convert to LibreOffice and this has made it so much easier to work with others who are still using MS
I switched to Libre Office from Microsoft Office, and found it amazing! I've used both of them, but you must break a bank to maintain MS Office. Thank you for this video.
I tried a few of my Excel spreadsheets and they loaded just fine. From my side, it looks like I will have to get used to their coding structure for formulas. Bu that won't keep me from getting deeper into this. I'm glad you posted the fonts portion, I never thought about that.
Thank you thank you! I never thought of just defaulting the save to docx, set it and forget it. Now I can share with family again w/o manually saving as docs. I did have to install calibri separately (which was easy), for some reason it wasn't included in the microsoft ttf install.
Whoa!!! You've done great work here. Thank you. I need this.
Thanks alot Chris, indeed its very useful to know these, lets call them "optimizations" in order to make the adjustments and use it better, hopefully this will help a lot more people to start learning and using Libreoffice much more and less dependant on just microsofts programs and OS.
Nice video guide on changing defaults!
I'm lucky not to be worried about sharing documents with others but I too once changed at least the theme somehow and remember it felt... difficult.
Having the Microsoft fonts installed is handy either way, so if it isn't for FreeOffice (which is really nice btw albeit closed source) this comes in handy also.
Thank you for the Tutorial this is really helpful!
Thanks for this - I use Libre Office on my lunux systens, and now have some ideas to make it more useful to my users.
Thank you Chris for this video. I am a user of LibreOffice. I use it exclusively. I have never really understood why Windows Office users always had some gripes about LibreOffice. Now my understanding of their issues has increase.
I thinkLibreOffice is better and easier than Microsoft
Thank you for the vid. This is exactly what I'm looking for. So now I could use libre office to create documents for collaboration. Those you mentioned are what's holding me back in ditching Office 2013 (via wine) on my Linux laptop.
Chris, I went a step further and setup a keyboard shortcut to hide/unhide the menubar because the menubar looks foreign with that UI style. Really love your content.
Thank you, Chris. Very informative.
Dude could you make tutorials on covering the topics in red hat exams. And also, maybe lab exercises vm from centos would be really cool..
You explanations are clear and easy to understand. Thanks
Thank you for this instructive video. i will change my settings as you suggest. Very helpful.
As always helpful video, thanks. ♥️
Thanks for this. I was missing the ttf-vista-fonts, having just previously added the ttf-ms-fonts from the AUR in Manjaro.
Thanks universe to make me find this video, and thank you, Chris, for making it
Having used both products, I honestly prefer libre office over Microsoft office. In my opinion it's way more powerful and customizable. Did my MSc thesis using this application and the end result had a professional look and feel to it. Received lots of positive feedback on the finished product
I have both, and use both. I do not follow the rule that goes like this "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". I had 10 years of using MS Office and an a similar time 10 years with LibreOffice, I have no problems in using either.
You do need a bit of memory to remember word processing shortcuts. As for spread-sheets, I can load my complex sheets with either product and functionality is the same.
This has been exactly my gripe about Libre / Linux. The biz world runs on MS Office and the lack of familiarity with the UI on Libre Writer. Great video with many helpful tips.
What good timing, I made this switch a few days ago
This was actually helpful, particularly things like view style, save, fonts. Another irritation is the context menu that pops up on right click on highlighted text. I had to customize mine (and wife's). You could add more on that as the discussions on the libreoffice help forums are confusing. They use different terminology of in libre land and yet sometimes switch back to MS terminology, very confusing
Thank you for helping me put faith back in Libre!!
Ty for this video and
Thanks for the 15 Useful Linux Commands helped me to learn navigate a bit better in the terminal.
I use it all the time, and for what I do, it works very well! I am not a business. I REFUSE to be held captive by Microsoft's scams where Office is concerned!
Your prelude to this video is SPLENDID.
I just saw this video today. Thanks for this. Since my son was using his laptop mainly for online games and watching CZcams videos, we did not get him Office for his laptop when we bought it a couple of years ago. Now that he has to use it for online college classes due to the pandemic, I loaded LO and have had to teach him to save his files in MSO formats (mainly Word) since LO did not do that automatically. His classes require the use of MSO formats (or PDF's depending on the situation). My son is intellectually challenged, so he does not pick up on these things easily, being able to change the default format LO saves in will be a big help, especially since classes will be starting up again. THANKS!!! BTW, he is using it on a Windows laptop, I need to see if I need to change the default font, too, I did not think of that. His teachers have not complained about incompatible fonts, only file format.
Thank you for this sir. I have seen this video years ago, i am just revisiting this video again.
this is a 4 year old video but still a gold for information. Thank you.
Before I used Libreoffice but gave up due to several reasons. But the new iteration of Libreoffice feels very polished and good for those used to Microsoft Word. I ran the new program for a bit and not having any frustration episodes so far. Good thing !
This is awesome. Thank you!
Thanks! this was clear and easy to follow and worked for me!
a productive video, thank you!
I ditched Microsoft Office five years ago and installed Libre Office on Mac, Linux and Windows 10. I have never looked back, my staff love it, I haven't felt like I am missing any features or usability.
Thats awesome buddy.. i just migrated and i love these..
Thank you! Helpful info. ☺
It helps alot. Thanks bro
There are some less open alternatives as well: Softmaker Office (costs) and WPS Office (free, but not OS).
I am a Linux Guy and so LibreOffice has been on my hands for all my years in computing- I have learnt to work on it better via this video by setting it to work like MS office -- you can't imagine how many times I shared wrongly saved extension with windows guys
Very helpful. I am just starting out in Ubuntu and was curious about cross platform compatibility. I'm subscribing to learn more.
thanks , very interresting ! always feels good to learn more !
I don't use a word processor much anymore, but my LibreOffice is nicely setup: around 8 icon themes to choose from, several color theme settings, reconfigured menu & toolbar, several plugin extensions, Emacs keybindings + original/alternate keybindings on top of that and it's all synced with my TexLive install: it's a great program if you're willing to put the time in.
Great video, now I need to do this with my Libre Office install lol.
Such a pity there is no local ms office application for Linux but its amazing how good Libreoffice is. I remember trying it back in 2015 and had a horrible experience with it saving documents so they work on windows but now it is so much easier.
Chris,
I found this very helpful thanks. Could you or do you have a video explaining how to stop Microsoft office taking over when I try to send an email through LibreOffice.
Thanks. Great video concerning change management. Cheers.
I used Libre in my office while everybody is using microsoft, although for most part Libre office delivers, it can be frustrating when document format is everything. Apparently when exported to Docx, my counterparts with microsoft sometimes sees stuff different than I.
Thanks man, I just switched to linux and this will definitely help me
Very useful video Brother ! Thankyou !
I am student and I m switching to linux just because of you...wanted to say "THANKYOU"🤝
Thanks for the assistance - I'm jumping ship!
Thank you very much! Very helpful appreciate the tutorial
.
Moved over 15 years ago. Excellent program. Also use Scribus to produce a 40 page magazine twice a year.
I remember in the last 2 years I worked 2009/2010, I used OpenOffice, the predecessor of LibreOffice, twice to safe complex Word document of colleagues. Word would crash on it, after opening it in OpenOffice and saving it again, they were re-usable in Word again.
Thank you. Very helpful.
Also, Brother Chris, if your recipient doesn't need to modify the document, then you can send the document as PDF very easily, and there's no concern about the loss of fidelity. Look under the File menu. Perfect! :-)
Thank you very much Chris.
great clip. very easy to follow and straight-forward
Thank you I needed this information.
Fantastic Information. Thanks for the update.
Really appreciate it, thank you.
Can you talk about an alternative for Evernote on Linux? Cloud & mobile devices ready
I'm not a big MS fan, but from all the alternatives I've seen, they all have their quirks, which is why MS Excel is so popular, out of the box, it works, can be customized without having to download and configure additional features. Many of us have decades invested into Excel and VBA, and to have to navigate around re-learning how to do old things, a new way, skipping countless hours wondering how to fix the things that don't crossover between LibreOffice and MS Office, you mays well just fork over the money, and stay with Excel, a name that people have been familiar with since Lotus 1-2-3 went extinct.
Agreed... the free programs are fine if you're doing something simple. But the more advanced you get, Excel starts to really pull away from the pack. VBA and more recently Power Query are absolute game changers that the free programs can match. As a statistician who works with data, there are simply things I can do in Excel that I just can't do with the free alternatives.
Light users: Any suite will do (might as well save money and use a free one).
Regular users: Free may still be ok, but you might find yourself missing a few features.
Advanced users: Excel really shines. Unless you want to learn a coding language like SAS or Python, it's the clear choice.
Just my $0.02.
Thank you Chris.
the arial and Calibri font are build in the LibreOffice 7.1 but it is good to set it as default!
also to customize the extension is good advice!
Excellent video. Thank you.
The latest Libreoffice also has tabbed and compact toolbars that look like the usual Office UI. Good for tablets and convertibles.
finally! i had that problem with the file extensions, thanks!
Thanks great tips about the fonts
Can you do something like this for other LibreOffice apps please? (particularly Impress)
Great stuff. Thanks.
btw I use LaTeX :D
What? Not Tex? Or something like GNU TeXmacs?
@@benriful I'm a filthy casual. All the cool kids use groff nowadays
"cool kids" :D
@Vornamed Nachnamed Rmarkdown and its derivatives is pretty neat too, since you'll be doing the computation in R anyway.
I've been using Libre Office for years. It's vastly less buggy and annoying than using MS Office, which I've used extensively for decades.
I switched from MS Office to Open Office when MS Office introduced the ribbon toolbars (which I believe was Office 2007). I was annoyed at that change of interface and never ever used MS Office again. Then in 2011, IIRC, there was this drama between Open Office and Libre Office and I switched to Libre Office. I was still a Windows user back then, for many years. I was never a power user of any office suite, I mostly used Word/Writer for writing homework, essays and reports in school, and Excel for converting tabular data to CSV files for data analysis in college.
That said, I find Libre Office to be somewhat poop, so I rarely use it (pretty much only when someone sends me a MS Office file). I mostly use LaTeX for writing documents (and I write it in Kate), and I typically use custom NodeJS scripts when working with tabular data and CSV files. For presentations and slide shows, I either use LaTeX or Corel Draw (which I really miss on Linux).
LaTeX has a pretty steep learning curve, but it is my choice when writing up my resume. Documents have never been prettier.
@@trapspringer9891 I learnt it in college. I studied physics, and we did everything in LaTeX. This was before I switched to Linux, so this is one of the things that only got better as I switched. MikTeX under Windows is not the nicest experience.
If you use CorelDraw for layout purposes, you may want to take a look at Scribus. It's effectively a WYSIWYG editor for stuff like magazine / newspaper layouts. There is also a graphical overlay onto Latex called GNU TeXmacs, perhaps decent though I only tried it out, for me text layouts is secondary, I'm much more into graphics work professionally.
@@benriful
Scribes describe[sd] itself as "Open Source Desktop Publishing" so it's more than a "WYSIWYG editor"; it's intended for DTP layout and not word processing, unlike Word or Writer which are intended for word processing, but have DTP layout features bolted on.
The opening comments can also be said of Microsoft Office: having used LibreOffice at home when I recently changed jobs and had to usr excel I found exactly the same - ooen it up, try to do a couple of things, and yeuck. Unfortunately I didn't have the give up option to be ablecto just close it.
Even now, 8 months later, I regularly get frustrated by excel's way of doing things (which is not surprising having used first OpenOffice and now LibreOffice for 10+ years).
It all boils down to what you're used to, but that doesn't counteract the learning curve of any different package - it just makes it harder to switch.
Thank you Chris! I know you did this 3 years ago - but thank you anyway!
This video is GOLD!!!!
Thanks, it works perfectly
but when you open docx from libre office, isnt it gonna screw up the formating when you open it in ms office?
Also, you might want to store all of your original long term documents in the open ODF format, and convert to Microsoft Office format, or formats, on demand.
Great Job !! I took your tips over on 3 machines: Windows 10, Makulu Lindoz and Raspbian X Nighthawk on my Raspberry Pi4.
In Raspbian X Nighthawk the taskbar on top stays black, which I hate.
I think it's caused by a pre-installed theme of Raspbian X Nighthawk.
Can you tell me how to change the color of the taskbar here ??
THANKS !!
Your great!! Wish you would also take notes of the detail steps, like i do, and include the notes for us to use. That would save us followers lots of time. - thanks - Old Tony
Thank you soooo much bro, bless you
Thanks. I wondered how to do some of this. The thing you did not cover that is still a pain for me is how to get rid of all the foreign fonts.
I've been using Libreoffice for about 2 years and only just learned today that UI contextual groups are a thing, effectively substituting one of my main features I miss from MS Office, the Ribbon UI.