All she used was Microsoft Office products until she used my computer to type a recipe document.

LibreOffice has Microsoft beat in that you can open more odbc types such as a MySQL database.īefore marrying me, my wife was a secretary for 5 years. LibreOffice did it right by making a spreadsheet program (calc) do spreadsheet things only and their database (base) connect via odbc to other databases. The biggest hurdle to switch is that Microsoft Office included odbc connectors in a spreadsheet program (Excel) instead of directing users to a database program (access). LibreOffice reads and writes docx and xlsx, and Microsoft Office reads and writes odf and ods. LibreOffice and Microsoft Office save in formats that are compatible with each other.

What you see on the screen in Microsoft Office, Google Apps, or LibreOffice will be what you get when you print it out or email it. Even with Google Apps, I submit a feature request, wait for it, and get the updated version when it arrives – I don’t have to buy a new version to get this new feature. This is the power and strength of open source software. If I couldn’t wait for it to get to upstream, I could recompile with my patch and get it deployed in a matter of hours. With LibreOffice, I can contribute a patch, submit it upstream, get it reviewed, and have it accepted into main stream. Some may argue that there are better license options with Microsoft and the $508 per user per 2 years (with the open license source: ) is not a fair estimation, however, it is not fair to compare a stagnant version of Office versus the always updated version of GAFW or LibreOffice. This would incur a cost savings of ~$17.50 per user per month (GAFW $5 plan versus Office 2016 Professional Plus, Corporate, Open License, License Only). I recently submitted a proposal to remove Microsoft Office from off my network and switch to Google Apps for Work and LibreOffice.

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