• empireOfLove@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, its gotta be the MS Office suite.

    Yes if you’re just writing your own simple documents libreoffice/OpenOffice will work, but if you have to do anything more complex than a single page spreadsheet, text-on-white presentations, or 3 page MLA book reports… or, even worse, have to interact with documents and spreadsheets created by basically any other person on the planet, I’ve just never had a good consistent experience with any of the free options.

    • ebits21@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Disagree. Libreoffice is pretty capable for most use cases nowadays.

      Compatibility is also pretty good with Microsoft formats despite Microsoft‘s best efforts.

      OpenOffice is dead.

      • boyi@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        it’s pretty capable in term of most functionalities but you can’t get the formatting, e. g. word docs, exactly one-to-one with its MS office version counterpart. So it would be difficult to share to multiplatforms users.

        And Microsoft intentionally introduce bugs in its files design so that certain functionalities will be extremely difficult to replicate.

      • empireOfLove@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        unfortunately “pretty good” is not “guaranteed”, which is often what I need for both work and school. I tried to make myself use only libre options for like a week and just about every assignment I opened was broken in some way or another so I always ended up back in Word.

        I’ll still use the libreoffice options if i’m, say, already logged into my Linux install and don’t want to bother going back to Windows. But since I get Office for free thru work and school, and so does everyone else, well… I just use it.

      • mnrockclimber@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        As someone that despises MS Office, LibreOffice is even worse. All I wanted to do was create a simple database of contact info, donation info, and reservation scheduling for a small nonprofit. Something I could do in minutes in Access. Let me tell you the database part of LibreOffice SUCKS. You can’t even import csv’s! Best you can do is copy paste cells into fields and Hope all the formatting and data types work. And connecting to other external data sources is an incredible pain. I found MS Office on sale for $35 and threw LibreOffice in the trash where it belongs.

      • FortifiedAttack [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Not sure how it is nowadays, but back in 2018 Libreoffice Calc was struggling to handle even a single sheet of data entries, performance-wise, let alone multiple sheets.

        I’m not expecting it to have every feature imaginable, but I do expect it to not freeze when processing even a relatively small dataset.

      • sailingbrit@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I’m surprised to see quip here, honestly it’s never been for me (even with it’s salesforce integration). What do you like about it compared to gdocs / word?

      • empireOfLove@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        That’s why I don’t use any of the real “365” web apps, only their desktop apps which do keep the bullshit to some minimum.

    • zer0@thelemmy.club
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      1 year ago

      If you have to interact with documents created by others it would be better to use open formats not proprietary shit designed to be not cross compatible

      • empireOfLove@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Unfortunately industry and academia does not view it in such a manner… those microsoft contracts are too appealing for them lol

    • sibloure@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I’ve found OnlyOffice (not to be confused with OpenOffice) is very compatible with Microsoft’s Office document format. I can open and edit docx files created by other people with no problem.

    • Fleppensteyn@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      I don’t need office much but when I do, I hate that I can never find what I’m looking for in that stupid ribbon. I also don’t know any good MS Access alternative.

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Disagree but collaboration is horrible. Online Office sucks too though, they dont even try. They want people to use Windows.

      • empireOfLove@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Oh yeah 365 online simultaneous “collaboration” is absolutely useless. If I really need multiple people inside the same document I’ll use Google docs and then export it to finish off the formatting.

        • Pantherina@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Yeah wow thats not better. Never used that, but finishing off formatting on a complex Paper is not really possible

    • cadekat@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      Eh, beamer is more than enough for most presentations. If your slideshow needs to be that flashy, you probably need more substance.

      git puts track changes to shame.

      You’re absolutely right about compatibility though.

      • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        If you’re using git to track document changes then you’re almost certainly in the tech industry and are quite familiar with the inner workings of your computer.

        For 90% of people using computers right now, asking them to use git to do version management on their day to day work flow would be like asking me to fly a rocket ship to work.

        I agree with the OP here, for what it does office is leaps and bounds ahead of any of the other software I’ve used to try to replace it and I always end up landing back on it.

        • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          There are many non-technical people in the world of mathematics and they manage to use LaTeX just fine. Overleaf offers synchronization without needing to touch Git.

          • CapeWearingAeroplane@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            Not only mathematics, pretty much everyone in the world of science/academia uses LaTeX. For git, I’ve seen some stuff, but most researchers that program a decent amount are reasonably familiar with git as well.

          • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            That’s still a far higher degree of technical competence than is possessed by the target audience for PowerPoint, Google Slides, or LibreOffice present. Also, claiming someone isn’t technical just because they’re not a computer programmer is a little odd. Most programmers I know don’t go anywhere near LaTeX because it’s so confusing and the spec is so complicated. They use powerpoint, Miro, or markdown slides when they want to present something.

            • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              This guys reply to me was literally “git isn’t too technical, mathematicians use this extremely complicated program for generating highly technical documents all the time so obviously grandma could too!”

              I agree 100% with you, I tried to use LaTeX ONE time in college and nearly chucked my computer out the window, and I’m a software developer. I was using it for a math class and couldn’t get my head around any of it.

              It certainly isn’t a good replacement for MSWord or PowerPoint for the VAST majority of people who don’t need to put mathematical notation into their presentations and just need words on a screen

      • interolivary@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Git diff will look pretty terrible for docx or similar files. The thing with the builtin change tracking is that it’ll actually show you what changed in the document view

          • interolivary@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Ah, I took it so that they mentioned beamer / LaTeX as a separate thing from change tracking, which is usually more of a document editor feature than a presentation editor feature.

          • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            But like, using LaTeX as a replacement for microsoft word is NOT really useful advice for the vast majority of people who use Word. I don’t need ANY of the special things LaTeX does, and I’ve been using Word all my life to do the basic stuff I need it for.

            I get where people here are coming from, but the whole point of this thread is talking about proprietary software which is better for the average use case than open source stuff, and I think the point still stands that MSOffice products absolutely fit that bill. Yes, open source or free alternatives exist, but they aren’t nearly as good, feature-full, and easy to learn and use as the open source alternatives.

            The fact that we’re here arguing whether LaTeX is a viable alternative to Word and Power Point kinda proves that MSOffice is the best for this IMO, because LaTeX isn’t exactly easy to pick up and use and is really intended for industries that need extremely complex formatting on their presentations and papers.

            • lud@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              No one here is talking about using LaTeX instead of Word. They are talking about making presentations, not documents.

              And yeah, I can see how making presentations in LaTeX is faster and easier (for some people) because PowerPoint is so incredibly annoying and slow to use. And the ability to use version tracking is very nice.

      • monotrox@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        Imo using a text based tool for presentations is really counterproductive because presentations should use as little text as possible.

        For me currently, libreoffice impress is actually the best option because it has all the necessary features (wysiwyg style editing, svg support, latex equations, some animations).

      • nick@campfyre.nickwebster.dev
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        1 year ago

        beamer

        I’ve used beamer before but honestly LaTeX is awful to use. It’s the standard tool so I have to use it for my work but I hate every minute of it.