[SOLVED] LibreOffice - Is it completely compatible with MS Office?

relztrah · May 9, 2024

I'm looking very seriously at purchasing a MacBook to replace my aging PC at home. At work I'll still live in the Windows world.

I have lots of Word, Excel and PowerPoint files that I use at home almost daily. Yes, I know from my wife's MacBook that Numbers, Pages, etc. can all open Office files and created files can be exported as .doc, .xls, etc. But it's a hassle and I would have to learn how to use them.

My son uses LibreOffice on his PC running Linux Mint and says that it is completely compatible with Office files. Do you agree or should I also purchase a copy of Office for Mac? Using exclusively MS 365 or Google Docs won't work because it would require uploading dozens of files to the cloud and I would have to be online every time I use my computer. This is often the case, but not always.

What is your opinion of LibreOffice? FYI all the reviews that I have read favor LibreOffice over OpenOffice, but if you are an OpenOffice fan, the same question applies.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Corday · May 9, 2024

The biggest drawback is LibreOffice saves text type (.docx) files as .odf. It reads MS Office files fine.

Gary R · May 9, 2024

Completely compatible ..... no ...... but very compatible, yes.

Formatting can sometimes vary a little from what you might expect with Word, which may or may not be a critical matter for you, but the only way you'd know is by trying it and seeing whether it affects the things you want to do, or not.

I've used both Libre Office, and Open Office, and personally I prefer the latter, but that's only because I'm more familiar with it, and no other reason.

Digerati · May 9, 2024

Corday said:
The biggest drawback is LibreOffice saves text type (.docx) files as .odf.

By default, true. But the default is easy to change. See https://www.howtogeek.com/281166/how-to-change-the-default-file-format-in-libreoffice/

I note the OP is talking about using this with a MacBook, not a Windows PC. Not sure if that matters, but considering MacBooks are the made by Apple, the "king of proprietary", it might.

relztrah · Aug 15, 2024

At my son's urging I began using Linux Mint on a HP laptop and so far I am very pleased with it. So I won't be purchasing that MacBook after all. LibreOffice comes packaged with Mint, and I've used it for a few tasks. So far so good.

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[SOLVED] LibreOffice - Is it completely compatible with MS Office?

relztrah

Contributor

Corday

Moderator

Gary R

Forum Moderator, Security Analyst, Windows Update Analyst

Digerati

Moderator
Hardware Expert
Microsoft MVP (Ret.)

relztrah

Contributor

[SOLVED] LibreOffice - Is it completely compatible with MS Office?

relztrah

Contributor

Corday

Moderator

Gary R

Forum Moderator, Security Analyst, Windows Update Analyst

Digerati

ModeratorHardware ExpertMicrosoft MVP (Ret.)

relztrah

Contributor

Moderator
Hardware Expert
Microsoft MVP (Ret.)